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THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 



THE 

LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

A TEXT-BOOK ON 
COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION 



BY 

IDA CLYDE qLARKE 

AUTBOB OV "AMEBICAN WOMEN AND THE WOHU) WAB," ETC. 



WITH INTRODUCTION BY 

P. P. CLAXTON 

V. 8. COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION 




D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

NEW YORK LONDON 

1918 






COPTBIGHT, 1918, BY 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 



OCT -9 1918 

Printed in the United States of America 



f , ©aA503761 



To My Father 
CHARLES WILLIAM GALLAGHER 

WHO ESTABLISHED IN HIS HOME 

THE FIBST "LITTLE DEMOCRACY" 

I EVER KNEW 

I INSCRIBE THIS BOOK 



"Every school district should be a little democracy, 
and the schoolhouse the Community Capitol." 

P. P. Claxton, 
U. S. Commissioner of Education. 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE 



The Community Center movement in America has 
been slowly but steadily gaining momentum for a 
number of years, but it took a state of war to turn 
into a single channel the full power of every or- 
ganized effort in that direction. Very early in the 
war there came a realization that the 50,000,000 civil- 
ian population could render more effective service 
through group organizations. This became apparent 
to me through the thousands of letters I received, as 
"Washington Editor of Pictorial Review, and in re- 
sponse to a wide demand for information on com- 
munity organization I wrote for the magazine a ser- 
ies of articles on this subject. I searched the coun- 
try for concrete examples of successful community 
organization, as few experiments had been made on 
a large scale and facts of practical value were difficult 
to secure. While these articles were running in the 
magazine a great driving force was injected into the 
community work ; the Government, through the Coun- 
cil of National Defense, the United States Bureau of 
Education, and the Woman 's Committee of the Coun- 
cil of National Defense, inaugurated a nation-wide 
campaign in the interest of community organization. 

ix 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE 

For years the United States Department of Agricul- 
ture has been directing highly successful cooperative 
work among people of the rural districts. I have 
made no attempt to cover this in detail, but have out- 
lined the work in a few of its phases in the hope that 
interest may be stimulated and that a wider use may 
be made of the vast amount of valuable material on 
the subject that is at all times available at Wash- 
ington. 

The book does not pretend to present any views I 
may personally have on the methods of community 
organization; I am not an expert but a student, and 
therefore I have merely tried to present, in logical 
sequence and in convenient and condensed form, the 
views of experts in various lines of community work 
for the benefit of other students of this important 
subject. 

The book would not have been possible except for 
the generous and enthusiastic assistance of Dr. Henry 
B. Jackson, Expert in Community Work of the United 
States Bureau of Eduation. I am also indebted to 
Mr. 0. B. Martin, and to other officials of the States 
Relations Service of the United States Department 
of Agriculture, for guidance in the selection of bulle- 
tins from which the material on rural community or- 
ganization has been taken. 

Ida Clyde Clabke. 
Washington, D. C. 



CONTENTS 

PAOB 

Introduction ... By Dr. P. P. Claxton, 

U. S. Commissioner op Education . . xiii 

CHAFTBB 

I. The Community Center Movement . 1 

II. Organizing The Community Center . 31 
(As recommended by the United 
States Bureau of Education) 

III. A Model Constitution . . . .56 

IV. The Community Forum, The Neigh- 

borhood Club, and The Home and 
School League . . . .70 
(As suggested by Dr. Henry E. Jack- 
son, Government Expert in Com- 
munity Work) 

V. Community Buying and Banking . 83 
(As suggested by Dr. Henry E. Jack- 
son, Government Expert in Com- 
munity Work) 

VI. The Community Garden ... 99 
(Plan recommended by Professor 
Hugh Findlay of U. S. Dept. of Agri- 
culture, formerly of Syracuse Uni- 
versity) 

xi 



CONTENTS 

CBAFTEB PAGB 

VII. The Community Market . . . 121 
(Plan recommended by the United 
States Bureau of Markets) 

VIII. The Community Kitchen . . . 142 

IX. Organizing the Eural Community . 161 
(Plan suggested by United States De- 
partment of Agriculture) 

X. Boys' and Girls' Clubs . . . 182 
(Plan in operation by the United 
States Department of Agriculture) 

XI. Mothers' and Daughters' Clubs. . 200 
(Plan in operation by the United 
States Department of Agriculture) 

XII. Community Music .... 221 

XIII. Community Drama .... 241 



ZIl 



INTRODUCTION 



Pioneer life in America with its broad marches,long 
lines of frontier, sparse population and limited means 
of intercourse, stimulated independence and called for 
individual effort. To an extent unknown elsewhere in 
the modern world it fostered the spirit of self-reliance 
and the power of individual initiative, which for a cen- 
tury and a half have been the most characteristic feat- 
ures of the American people and have contributed 
most to our strength and our unprecedented attain- 
ments. But increase in population and wealth, scien- 
tific knowledge and modern methods of industry and 
means of travel and intercourse demand organization 
and cooperation and turn individualism from strength 
into weakness. Things that were formerly of interest 
only to the individual or the family now concern 
vitally the entire community and local community 
interests extend to municipality, county, State and 
Nation. With all this have come also a large exten- 
sion of the spirit of democracy and a tendency to 
depend on the people for initiative and final decision 
in many things that formerly would have been left to 
their representatives in legislative bodies. Public 
opinion and popular sentiment become constantly 
more pervasive and more powerful. For the safety" 

xiii , 



INTRODUCTION 

and welfare of the people and of the country public 
opinion must be intelligent and enlightened and pop- 
ular sentiment must be free from the corruption of 
self-seeking and narrow partisanship and sectarian- 
ism. The need for developing and uniting the full 
strength of the Nation for success in the great war in 
which we are engaged, not for self-aggrandizement but 
for the freedom of the world, has given a sudden 
impulse toward national organization and has shown 
that this can never be made effective except through 
community organization. "We see now more clearly 
than ever before that the strength of a nation like ours 
depends on the developed strength of all of its con- 
stituent units and that a democracy must be alive in 
all its parts. For the welfare and safety of the dem- 
ocratic republic every final local community unit of it 
must be intelligent, virtuous and united for the public 
good. In these local communities the people must 
come together on terms of democratic equality for 
mutual instruction in regard to all things of common 
interest to them as members of these local communi- 
ties and as members of the larger communities, of 
municipality, county, State and Nation. Here also 
they must learn to cooperate in production, exchange 
and consumption for the protection of life, the pro- 
motion of health, the education of themselves and 
their children, and for all those things which can be 
had only in common and obtained only by united 
effort. 

In response to an increasing consciousness of the 
xiv 



INTRODUCTION 

need for such organization and cooperation many 
agencies are at work and many persons are attempt- 
ing to set forth the principles and methods necessary 
for success. The Little Democracy^ by Ida Clyde 
Clarke, summarizes quite fully and effectively the 
best that has been done and will be welcomed by the 
rapidly increasing and already large number of peo- 
ple interested in various forms of community organ- 
ization and cooperation. 

P. P. Claxton. 
Washington, D. C. 



T9 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

CHAPTER I 

THE COMMUNITY CENTER MOVEMENT 

The Government of the United States has 
asked that every community in America, 
in town and countryside, organize itself into a 
"little democracy," to the end that we may 
more quickly achieve that world-wide democ- 
racy which is our ideal, and in defense of which 
we have pledged to fight with all the resources 
at our command. The Council of National De- 
fense and the United States Bureau of Educa- 
tion have cooperated in a campaign in the 
interest of organizing a ** Community Coun- 
cil" in every school district, in every state in 
the Union, and the Woman's Committee of the 
Council of National Defense has put forth its 
best efforts in support of the plan. President 

1 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

Wilson stated, succinctly and forcibly, the 
whole purpose of this plan in his letter to the 
chairmen of the State Councils of Defense 
when he said: 

"Your state, in extending its national de- 
fense organization by the creation of Commu- 
nity Councils, is in my opinion making an ad- 
vance of vital significance. It will, I believe, 
result, when thoroughly carried out, in welding 
the nation together as no nation of great size 
has ever been welded before. It will build up 
from the bottom an understanding and sympa- 
thy and unity of purpose and effort which will 
no doubt have an immediate and decisive effect 
upon our great undertaking. You will find it, 
I think, not so much a new task as a unifica- 
tion of existing efforts, a fusion of energies 
now too much scattered and at times somewhat 
confused, into one harmonious and effective 
power. It is only by extending your organiza- 
tion to small communities that every citizen 
of the State can be reached and touched with 
the inspiration of the common cause. The 
schoolhouse has been suggested as an apt 
though not essential center for your local coun- 
cil. It symbolizes one of the first fruits of such 

2 



THE COMMUNITY CENTER MOVEMENT 

an organization, namely, the spreading of the 
realization of the great truth that it is each one 
of us as an individual citizen upon whom rests 
the ultimate responsibility. Through this great 
new organization we will express with added 
emphasis our will to win and our confidence 
in the utter righteousness of our purpose." 

As President Wilson has suggested we are 
not asked to contemplate any new ideas, for 
the Community Movement is almost world-old. 
We find it among the Christians in the cata- 
combs ; in the guilds of medieval times ; in the 
group organization of the Artel and the Mir in 
Russia; in the social center work everywhere; 
in the broadly conceived playground move- 
ment; in our modern system of education. In 
these and many ways we find the old ideal 
struggling to express itself, until now, when 
the very bulwarks of our civilization seem 
threatened, the cruel and costly demands of 
war have thrown into the limelight the one in- 
strument, ready made to our hand that can 
"weld the nation together as no nation of 
great size has ever been welded before." There 

3 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

are many who believe with John Collier that 
*'In Eussia today these Community Centers, 
thousands of years old, are being welded into 
organization along modem lines, and that new 
Eussia, Imperial Eussia, the Eussia which wiU 
fight great wars, and not only military wars, 
the Eussia which will yet blossom as the most 
glorious of all the flowers of national life — ^the 
roots of that Eussia will be living roots grow- 
ing out of a folk life, a local community life 
comparable in fairly close detail to the town 
meetings and Jto the Community Centers in 
America today. '* And who doubts that out of 
the Community Center movement as it is being 
presented to us today there will come a more 
unified America and a wider application of the 
democratic principle for which the most en- 
lightened nations of the world have staked 
their all. 

The Neighborhood the Unit. — ^America is the 
sum total of thousands upon thousands of 
neighborhoods, and therefore the neighborhood 
is the logical unit of the Community Center 
organization. The labors of the educator and 

4 



THE COMMUNITY CENTER MOVEMENT 

the statesman are more conspicuous but not 
more important than the labors of the commu- 
nity organizer, for no patriotic work can rival 
in value that of the group of people who stead- 
ily build toward a common consciousness, a 
common purpose, and a common devotion. 
Thousands of organizations, based on altruistic 
principles and founded and grounded in a de- 
sire to serve humanity, sprang up and died be- 
fore they developed definitely in the conscious- 
ness of the people the realization that it is 
necessary to get at the first unit, to reach peo- 
ple in their original habitat, to deal with funda- 
mentals, before we can hope to have a national 
mind, to think nationally, and to feel nation- 
ally. Dr. Graham Taylor has said: 

'*I don't know what is coming with suflBcient 
centrifugal force to drive us together, but I 
believe we never can be driven together except 
in these neighborhood units; the city is made 
up of its neighborhoods, and can be no strong- 
er than its neighborhood power. Whatever 
comes the state and the nation will be stronger 

5 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

when the local comnmnities shall be linked to- 
gether. ' * 

Has the war furnished the centrifugal force 
that is to drive us together? Will the Commu- 
nity Center Movement, started in many ways 
and in many places, gain the needed impetus, 
now that the full power of the United States 
Government has been turned on? The answer 
remains with every community in America — 
with every man, woman and child in these com- 
munities. 

Dr. Shailer Mathews says: 

''Democracy in the eighteenth century was 
essentially a fight to get rights that somebody 
else had that we thought we ought to have. 
It was a great and a tremendous struggle for 
rights. Under the conception of certain phi- 
losophies men thought that democracy was a 
sort of replevin of stolen rights. But as we 
have gone on during these hundred years there 
has grown up this tremendous and wonderful 
conception complementary to the struggle to 
get rights, namely, the great conception that 
we must give other people rights, and the world 

6 



THE COMMUNITY CENTER MOVEMENT 

justice, and to give justice has come to be a 
bigger and more appealing ideal than to get 
rights." 

And this is the ideal, this is the variety of 
democracy that can live and flourish in the 
soil of the Community Center. 

The School as the Center. — If the neighbor- 
hood is the logical unit of organization for a 
real democracy, it seems almost obvious that 
the public school is the logical center. The 
United States Government has invested in the 
Public School system the impressive sum of 
$1,347,000,000, a fact which undoubtedly justi- 
fies the wider use of the public school buildings 
— the use of them all the year through and the 
use of them by adults as well as by children. 
There has been during recent years a marked 
and growing tendency for the public school to 
develop into a house of the people to be used 
by them, for mutual aid in self-development. 
This idea is at the very heart of the Community 
Center movement and it is the touchstone of its 
value for the national welfare. 

7 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

The schoolhouse is the logical center for the 
commiuiity orgamzation because schoolhouses 
are the property of the people and because 
they are conveniently distributed in every sec- 
tion of the country. President Wilson's pro- 
nouncement on this subject is full of ringing 
truths. He said: 

"A vision of the meaning of democracy 
opens before us when we conceive of citizens 
going to school to one another in the common 
schoolhouses to understand and answer public 
questions, as hitherto only representatives of 
the citizens (in legislatures) have gone to 
school to one another in the buildings provided 
for them. 

''When we make this use of these buildings 
that belong to all of us, that stand ready in 
every neighborhood in America, we are recov- 
ering in a very practical way the institution 
which freemen have always and everywhere 
held fundamental — ^the institution of common 
counsel and mutual comprehension. In this 
restoration of the ancient equipment and prac- 
tice of freemen, we are meeting a vital need 
of our new and complex age. We are answer- 

8 



THE COMMUNITY CENTER MOVEMENT 

ing the necessity that a simple means be found 
whereby, by an interchange of points of view, 
men of differing private interests and opinions 
may get together upon the common ground of 
public responsibility; the necessity, which is 
made acute by the fact that the process of 
modem industry, the process of modem poli- 
tics, the whole process of modern life is a proc- 
ess from which we must exclude misunder- 
standings. 

**If there is, anywhere in the United States, 
a person who objects to this use of the other- 
wise-idle public buildings for frank, orderly, 
all-sided consideration of the facts regarding 
matters of general concern, you may be reason- 
ably sure that there is being concealed behind 
that person something which particularly needs 
to be looked into. Nothing that ought to be kept 
will be hurt by the fair and thorough discussion 
of citizens in neighborhood assembly. 

**The spread and growth of this movement 
by which schoolhouses, instead of less worthy 
places, are coming to be used as voting centers, 
and by which these appropriate buildings are 
being opened to serve, not the children only, 
but all the people of their communities, must 
encourage and challenge to cooperation every 

9 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

man and woman who shares the spirit of Amer- 
ica and appreciates the immediate and primary 
importance of visualizing the conmaon inter- 
est." With rare eloquence and convincing 
logic Dr. Philander P. Claxton, United States 
Commissioner of Education, has stated his 
views on the subject of the schoolhouse as the 
capitol of the ' ' Little Democracy. ' ' 

**To make more valuable to the people those 
things from which the people are accustomed 
to derive value [says Dr. Claxton] has very 
appropriately been said to be the prime busi- 
ness of legislators. That the schoolhouse, 
whose value to the people is already great, may 
become still more valuable to them, is the pur- 
pose of the community organization movement. 
A great democracy like ours, extending over 
three and one-half million square miles of ter- 
ritory and including more than one hundred 
million people, must be alive, intelligent, and 
virtuous in all its parts ; every unit of it must 
be democratic. The ultimate unit in every 
State, Territory and possession of the United 
States is the school district; every school dis- 
trict should therefore be a little democracy, 
and the schoolhouse should be the community 
capitol ; here the people should meet to discuss 

10 



THE COMMUNITY CENTER MOVEMENT 

among themselves their common interests and 
to devise methods of helpful cooperation. It 
should also be the social center of the commu- 
nity, where all the people come together in a 
neighborly way on terms of democratic equal- 
ity, learn to know each other, and extend and 
enrich their community sjrmpathies. 

*'To this purpose the schoolhouse is especial- 
ly fitted; it is non-sectarian and non-partisan; 
the property of no individual, group or clique, 
but the common property of all; the one place 
in every community where all have equal rights 
and are equally at home. The schoolhouse is 
also made sacred to every family and the com- 
munity as a whole by the fact that it is the 
home of their children and the training place 
of future citizens; here all members of the 
community may appropriately send themselves 
to school to each other and learn from each 
other of all things pertaining to the life of the 
local community, the State, the Nation, and 
the world. The appropriation of the school- 
house for community uses has well been called 
a master-stroke of a new democracy. 

** These facts are not new, but the emphasis 
on their importance is new and amounts to a 
new discovery. The Nation's immediate need 

11 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRAGT 

to mobilize the sentiments of the people and 
to make available the material resources has 
directed special attention to the schoolhouse 
as an effective agency ready-made to its hand 
for this purpose. The National importance of 
this new discovery is evidenced by the fact that 
the Council of National Defense has planned 
a nation-wide movement to organize the school 
districts of the United States as a means of 
bringing to the people information in regard 
to the immediate needs of the nation and cre- 
ating and ^unifying sentiment for the National 
defense. In order that this organization may 
be made most effective and be made permanent, 
the Council expressed a desire to cooperate 
with the Bureau of Education." 

Basic Principles of Commimity Movement. — 
The Community Center Movement does not aim 
merely to increased efficiency measured by the 
standards of the factory and machine industry. 
** Human beings," said John Collier, President 
of the National Community Center Association, 
"are not to be dealt with as if they were pas- 
sive material, like iron ore or cotton thread, 
which can be taken and put in a machine and 

12 



THE COMMUNITY CENTER MOVEMENT 

hammered or woven and put through special- 
ized processes and turned out at the end a fin- 
ished product. Unconsciously we have modeled 
our governmental efficiency on the efficiency 
which has characterized the nineteenth century, 
which is the efficient production of wealth, of 
goods ; and of course goods have no memories, 
no hopes, no rights, no souls. See those highly 
complicated welfare activities threading their 
way among the people ; see the unconsciousness 
of the people as they are being operated upon 
by the truant officer, by employment agent, by 
protective devices of one kind or another; see 
their unconsciousness as they are touched here 
and touched there by these highly efficient and 
highly specialized ministrations of government, 
and see if the picture of the people as being 
mere passive material does not hold good. The 
people are not conscious of what the govern- 
ment is aiming at. The development of our 
centralized welfare work in government and 
private social service is being carried out on 
the machine patterns, and we must discover 
some way by which to bring all these purposes 

13 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

of government to bear on the personality of 
the common man, which means all of us. We 
must discover some way to enlist a passionate 
and continuous personal response from the in- 
dividual so that he will, as he alone can do, 
shape himself through cooperating in the com- 
mon purpose." 

The Community Center Movement seems to 
answer this need, for its underlying purpose 
is to bring the mass of people into day-by-day 
working relations with constructive operations 
of the government. This of course establishes 
a very important relation between the Com- 
munity Center and the whole problem of gov- 
ernment. The Community Center proposes that 
the people should govern themselves ; it asserts 
that there are vast stores of unreleased energy 
in every neighborhood; and that the organiza- 
tion of the neighborhood is the power that helps 
to release these energies to the interest of the 
whole of society. 

The Glorified Mill-Pond. — But back of the 
Community Center Movement there is some- 
thing more — something that lies at the base of 

14 



THE COMMUNITY CENTER MOVEMENT 

every fundamental. It is something spiritually 
deeper than these things that are translatable 
into words, something that may be realized but 
never comprehended by the finite mind. In 
Hopedale, Mass., there was an ugly mill pond, 
a bare, bulrush-shored, mucky stretch of bog 
and y^ater that nestled up close to the heart 
of the town. But the community organized, 
and someone saw the possibilities of that dingy 
morass. The lakelet was drained, dead trees 
removed, boulders blasted, and God's own trees 
and flowers were given a chance to grow in 
their own way. The sermon of the mill pond 
and the spiritual conception back of every sin- 
cerely planned Community Movement is ex- 
pressed in one sentence at the end of the story 
of the transformed mill pond; it is this: '^The 
whole morale of the village is raised and trans- 
figured by Hopedale' s glorified mill pond." 

Existing Organisations. — However glorious 
the future of the Community Movement may 
be the debt it owes to the work of previously 
existing organizations will never be forgotten, 
nor will any dazzling success of the future 

15 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

obliterate the successes of the past, when pio- 
neer workers, catching the vision, struggled 
through the darkness of half -awakened public 
opinion and laid the foundation stones upon 
which we to-day are building. The American 
Civic Association was a result of a realization 
that size in the building of our cities, without 
coordination, in a spirit of beauty and useful- 
ness, was a menace rather than an asset. 
Among the subjects seriously studied and in- 
telligently dealt with by this association since 
it was organized more than a dozen years ago 
are the community drama, the use of the 
schools as Community Centers, government 
city planning and park development, billboard 
and noise nuisance, good roads, country archi- 
tecture, national parks and better homes for 
wage earners. The contribution of this asso- 
ciation to the general welfare of the country 
cannot be overestimated, and to those specif- 
ically interested in these and other civic ques- 
tions its work is cordially commended, for 
President Wilson has said, ''War must not de- 
stroy our civic efficiency." The organization 

16 



THE COMMUNITY CENTER MOVEMENT 

has headquarters at Washington, D. C. The 
National Community Center Association con- 
cerns itself, as its name implies, with the prob- 
lems of community organization, and is doing 
a splendid work. The national headquarters 
are at 123 Madison Street, Chicago. The Na- 
tional Playground-Eecreation Association of 
America has done such broadly valuable work 
that its activities have been linked up with 
the Commission on Training Camp Activities, 
in connection with which it is doing much 
constructive war work. These and other or- 
ganizations have been too conspicuously suc- 
cessful not to be mentioned here, and each of 
them has immediately before it a much wider 
field of usefulness than it has enjoyed before. 
In anything like a summing up of the debt 
the Community Center Movement owes to the 
past, the work of the settlement must be men- 
tioned, for it has a distinct place in the Com- 
munity Center Movement. In fact, every set- 
tlement in America, as it has sought to bridge 
the gulf between the plain man and the expert 
worker, has shortened the distance to the ulti- 

17 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

mate goal of every sincere social service work- 
er. And we are moving rapidly indeed now 
toward this goal. Those who doubt it should 
learn of the Community Clearing House Plan 
devised by the New York Committee on Unad- 
justed Children in the Gramercy District of 
New York City; the National Social Unit or- 
ganization recently put in operation in Cincin- 
nati, or the social service plans in any of our 
larger cities. 

The Problem of the City. — Heretofore those 
who have focused their attention on the prob- 
lems of the city have had little in common with 
those who are specifically interested in the im- 
provement of country life. They have studied 
the same basic problem, it is true, but from 
such vastly different angles that it has some- 
times seemed that two unrelated problems have 
been presented. The Conununity Movement is 
the key to the whole problem — it represents a 
principle that is fundamental, and therefore it 
applies to the city as well as to the country. A 
Community may be organized with equal prom- 
ise of success in city or village, or countryside. 

18 



THE COMMUNITY CENTER MOVEMENT 

The most conspicuous social growth of our 
modem civilization is that thing we call a city, 
and so complex have become its problems that 
some of the master minds of the day have con- 
centrated on them. Many serious, thinking 
peopl'^ are asking, "Has the city broken 
downl! Has it failed to meet the demands that 
have been put upon it? Are new problems 
piling up faster than we can solve the existing 
ones?" Mr. John E. Lathrop, who made an 
intensive study of the problems of two hun- 
dred cities while he was engaged with the 
American City Bureau, and who was director 
of the city planning exhibit shown in thirty 
cities of the United States, Canada and South 
America, gives some startling figures and cites 
some amazing facts. From 1900 to 1910 pop- 
ulation of the cities increased much more rap- 
idly than that of the country. With increas- 
ing population in the city there must be in- 
creased facilities, and the problem of trans- 
portation looms larger and larger, while the 
cost of operation increases per capita with in- 
creased population. In 1905 New York spent 

19 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

^90,000,000 for subways. The added facilities 
"were absorbed in six months, and the cars were 
more crowded at that time than they had been 
before. Seven years later, having endured to 
the utmost, the city planned more subways — 
$350,000,000 of them. And thus in ten years 
New York City made debts of $440,000,000 to 
«olve its transportation problem. Yet who can 
say that the new subways will be adequate to 
meet the increasing demands of an enlarged 
city? Of striking interest in this connection is 
the statement of Mr. Theodore P. Shonts, Pres- 
ident of the Interboro Transit Company of New 
York, who said: *'Each year the problem of 
handling the millions of New York traffic grows 
increasingly difficult. The struggle is hard, not 
to anticipate the city's future needs, but mere- 
ly to keep up with the present. Public Service 
Commissioner Travis H. Whitney estimates 
that city traffic is increasing at the rate of more 
than 100,000,000 annually. We seem to be 
working in a circle: (1) added facilities; (2)' 
more population; (3) more congestion." 

The Croton water supply was provided 
20 



THE COMMUNITY CENTER MOVEMENT 

at great expense. Immediately a new sup- 
ply was planned at a cost of nearly $200,- 
000,000. Bridges have been built by New York 
which have cost nearly $100,000,000, and sev- 
eral others have been planned, one to cost $42,- 
000,000. Freight terminals are proposed for 
New York in Brooklyn to cost perhaps $100,- 
000,000. The passenger terminals of the New 
York Central and Pennsylvania Railroads cost 
at least $500,000,000. The improvements to 
Riverside Drive and the covered freight tracks 
of the New York Central are to cost something 
like $50,000,000. In the five years it took to 
build the new subways the regular expense of 
New York City was $100,000,000 a year, or 
$500,000,000 in the five years. In this period 
other improvements will probably aggregate 
$100,000,000. In 1915 the Comptroller was 
quoted ofiBcially as saying that New York City 
during that fiscal year had received more than 
$500,000,000 and disbursed more than $500,- 
000,000, so that during the five year period the 
total will be the unthinkable total of $2,500,- 
000,000, or at 5,000,000 population, a per capita 

21 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

of $500. In, reviewing these staggering figures 
Mr. Lathrop says: 

*'As New York's population grows, the fig- 
ures per capita are constantly increased. Un- 
less something cures this balloon-like tendency, 
these charges per capita will reach $1,000, or 
twice a whole year's total income of the aver- 
age representative adult worker in the United 
States. What is the use in going on in this 
fashion? Is it pessimism to pause to consider? 
Is it not simple wisdom to do so ? What busi- 
ness can endure when costs pile up faster than 
returns ? ' ' 

This presents a bird's-eye view of some of 
the purely material problems of the city, but 
how much greater are those in which human 
life and human welfare and human progress 
are concerned; problems which cannot be 
stated in figures or crystalized in facts. These 
problems, too, are receiving the most thought- 
ful and the most expensive attention. Germany 
places a higher economic value on human be- 
ings than she does on material wealth, but she 
has dehumanized herself in the process of 

22 



THE COMMUNITY CENTER MOVEMENT 

working out this policy, for the reason that 
the rights of the individual are ignored, and 
human beings are manipulated, ground up, if 
need be, to satisfy the iron will of the few. If 
in America we are learning to value humanity 
more and the material less, we must attain 
our ideal of democracy by developing in the 
individual the desire and the intelligence to 
exercise the right to speak for himself in all 
of those matters that concern himself. It has 
been asserted that there are in the city of New 
York no less than one hundred and forty-seven 
organizations doing welfare work of one kind 
or another — one hundred and forty-seven agen- 
cies occupying expensive buildings, employing 
expensive staffs, engaging the sincere and often 
sacrificial services of master minds, operating 
on an unconscious public! The need is not to 
interrupt the work of these agencies, but to in- 
tensify and coordinate it, and to make it more 
effective. 

Who will not be willing to give the Conmiu- 
nity plan of decentralization a chance — ^who 
will not be glad to see the Community principle 

23 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

applied to suffering New York and to other 
cities? 

The Problem of the Coumtry. — As in the city, 
so in the country, the main problem is that of 
transportation. A century ago when the farm- 
er made the larger number of things necessary 
for the use of the family, the problem was not 
so great. With the development of modern 
machinery the farmer must buy his machinery 
and tools, his clothing, and even much of his 
food from the manufacturer, or from the mer- 
chant who is the salesman of the manufacturer. 
Manufactured articles are sold as freely to the 
countryman as they are to the man who dwells 
in town. It is a matter of indifference to the 
manufacturer who buys his wares, so long as 
he sells them. But the city man, being nearer 
the manufacturer, has the advantage in trans- 
portation. The farmer not only has to consider 
how to get the things he wants from town, but 
how to get the things he wants to sell to the 
markets. Such problems of the country led the 
farmers to see that only by cooperation could 
they help matters. One of the first organiza- 

24 



THE COMMUNITY CENTER MOVEMENT 

tions of farmers was the Grangers, sometimes 
called Patrons of Industry. This organization 
was brought about by 0. H. Kelly, whom Pres- 
ident Johnson sent to the South immediately 
after the Civil War to study agricultural con- 
ditions. It became a powerful order and at one 
time had a membership of nearly a quarter of 
a million. Another order of great power was 
the Farmers' AUiance, organized in Texas in 
1876, for the purpose of punishing land and 
cattle thieves. Smaller organizations of sim- 
ilar character were later combined with the 
Farmers' Alliance, which at one time had a 
membership of over 5,000,000. The Farmers' 
Union of today is the successor of the Farm- 
ers' Alliance*. 

Then came Dr. Seaman A. Knapp, with his 
great vision and his remarkable mind. As 
someone said of him, he spent seventy years 
of preparation for seven years of work. He 
began on the greatest work of his life in 1911 
by organizing the Farmers ' Cooperative Work 
in Texas to fight the boll weevil that was mak- 
ing much havoc with the cotton crops. The next 

25 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

year, so striking had been his success, Con- 
gress furnished funds, and with the assistance 
of some local business men, he appointed agents 
and began to organize a few counties in Texas. 
The work attracted attention and Congress en- 
larged its appropriation. In a few short years 
this work had covered the entire South, had a 
force of more than 1,000 agents, an enrollment 
of more than 100,000 farmers, 75,000 boys in 
the corn clubs, and 25,000 girls in the canning 
clubs. In the year before Dr. Knapp died, Eus- 
sia, Brazil, England, South Africa and Argen- 
tina sent representatives to this country to 
study the demonstration work. Sir Horace 
Plunkett, the great Irish reformer, came for 
the same purpose, and at the request of the 
King of Siam, Dr. Knapp sent one of his agents 
to take charge of agricultural matters in that 
country. 

Dr. Knapp was undoubtedly one of the first 
men in America to see the principle of the com- 
munity movement as it relates to rural districts, 
and to make practical application of it, though 
he believed that the foundation work must be 

26 



THE COMMUNITY CENTER MOVEMENT 

done with the individual, and that the process 
must be slow. In later chapters an outline is 
given of the wonderful cooperative work done 
through the boys' and girls' clubs, as. initiated 
by Dr. Knapp, and conducted by the United 
States Department of Agriculture. 

If the farmer has his problems from a purely 
business standpoint, there are other problems 
that touch his family at a vital place. The farm 
lacks social opportunities. Someone has said, 
* ' When a district ceases to be a mere collection 
of householders and rises to the dignity of a 
community with common interests and common 
aspirations, it becomes alive, and the monotony 
of the country life becomes largely a thing of 
the past." Many a time a man has given up 
farming, not because he did not know how to 
till the soil and raise crops, but because his 
family demanded opportunities the country did 
not afford. The need of the community devel- 
opment having become apparent, farmers' 
clubs were among the first concrete results of 
this realization. The Farm Women's Clubs 
followed, and then the Community Club sprang 

27 



THE LITTLE DEMOCEACY 

up here and there. The latter was striMng 
nearer the heart of the real need, because it 
included in its membership the whole family. 

And thus we see that the farmer and the 
town dweller, by a long process, step by step, 
have come to see a possible solution of many 
of their problems through cooperation — 
through working together in small units on a 
democratic basis, beginning in the home and 
taking the gospel of a true democracy through 
to the community, the state, the nation and the 
world. 

Since transportation presents one of the most 
vital problems both in city and country life, it 
is interesting to note here that Mr. Edgar 
Chambless has invented a streetless type of 
city building which he calls "Roadtown," and 
which many scientists, engineers and sociolo- 
gists believe will be the type of the future. It 
is obvious that if we can build houses that com- 
bine the comfort and convenience of an apart- 
ment with the joy and health-giving surround- 
ings of a country home, we will go far toward 
the solution o^ many problems. "Roadtown" 

28 



THE COMMUNITY CENTER MOVEMENT 

is to be an apartment house built in the country 
and capable of indefinite expansion — on the 
principle of the sectional bookcase. Mr. Cham- 
bless' plan is for a continuous house, with the 
avenue of distribution and transportation 
within its well lighted and ventilated basement 
— built to house forty families, four hundred 
or forty thousand, as the demands of the future 
may require. At first glance the proposition 
seems almost weird, and yet, more than a score 
of experts in as many different lines have pro- 
nounced the plan perfectly sound and have de- 
clared that it embodies a fundamental princi- 
ple. Of the plan the inventor says: 

**Roadtowns will first be built at the ends of 
present city systems of rapid transit lines, and 
extend out into the country in many directions. 
The superior transportation of Roadtown will 
materially increase the area of the suburban 
belt; and long before the limit of this belt is 
reached, the Roadtown will have become a 
semi-agriculture community. 

' ' Roadtown will have a population of at least 
1,000 to the mile. Assuming that this popula- 

29 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

tion will be grouped among the various indus- 
tries on the same ratio as the population of the 
United States at the last census, we would have 
about seventy farmers for each thousand of 
population, or each mile of Eoadtown. This 
would permit each farmer to have nearly 
twenty acres to farm, within a mile distance of 
the house line and by going as far as three 
miles for crops needing but occasional atten- 
tion the Eoadtown farmer could cultivate sixty 
acres and yet live in a continuous house with 
greater comforts and conveniences than present 
city apartment hotel dwellers/' 



CHAPTER II 

ORGANIZING THE COMMUNITY CENTBE 

(As Recommended hy the United States Bureau 
of Education.y 

In the organization of a Community Center 
the essential factors to be considered are: its 
membership; its size; its executive officer; its 
board of directors ; its finances ; and its consti- 
tution. The suggestions here offered concern- 
ing them, together with the reasons for the 
suggestions, are the product of experience, and 
have been tested in operation. 

The organization of a community around the 
schoolhouse as its capital is the creation of 
a new political unit, a little democracy. It is 
new in the sense that it is the revival and en- 

* Adapted from ' ' How to Organize a Community Center, ' ' by 
Dr. Henry E. Jackson. Available from Supt. of Public Docu- 
ments, Washington, D. C. 

31 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

largement of an old institution, that we ought 
not willingly to let die. The movement to or- 
ganize local self-governing Communities takes 
us back not only to the New England Town- 
meeting, but still farther back to the Teutonic 
''Mark,'* the Eussian "Mir," and to the an- 
cient Swiss Cantonal Assembly. The fact that 
free village Communities in some form have 
existed in so many parts of the world is signifi- 
cant indication of a universal conviction that 
such organization is a necessity to human wel- 
fare. 

The Community Center aims to form such a 
free village Community, a town, a borough, a 
little democracy both in the cities and the open 
country. Its capitol and headquarters is the 
schoolhouse, because this is the most American 
institution and the only one suitable for the 
purpose. It alone provides a place where all 
can meet on equal terms of self-respect. It is 
conveniently distributed in every city, town and 
village in America. The term ''Center" ap- 
plies to the schoolhouse, the place of meeting. 
The term applied to the organization of the 

32 



ORGANIZING THE COMMUNITY CENTER 

people themselves is ** Community Associa- 
tion/' 

The first step in organization is to define 
the boundaries of the Community. These ought 
to be determined along natural lines, such as 
the territory from which the children in the 
school are drawn, or a district in which the 
people come together for other reasons than 
the fact that an artificial line is drawn around 
them. It ought not to be too large. 

All adult citizens, both men and women, liv- 
ing in the prescribed territory of the democ- 
racy, are members of it. If the schoolhouse 
is to be used as its capitol, the democracy must 
be comprehensive. It must be non-partisan, 
non-sectarian and non-exclusive. You do not 
become a member of a Community Center by 
joining. You are a member by virtue of your 
citizenship and residence in the district. Every- 
where else men and women are divided into 
groups and classes on the ground of their per- 
sonal taste or occupation. In a Community 
Center they meet as **folks" on the ground of 
their common citizenship and their common 

33 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

human needs. This is the distinguishing mark 
of the Community Center. 

Members of America. — The Century Diction- 
ary quotes the Attorney General of the United 
States as saying, "The phrase, *A citizen of 
the United States,' without addition or quali- 
fication means neither more nor less than a 
member of the nation." Membership implies 
obligation and responsibility. It is pleasant 
to feel that we are one and all ''members of 
America"; it gives not only a new sense of 
pride, but an intimate feeling of duty to the 
common welfare. To make citizenship mean 
membership is one of the obvious needs' in 
every Community. The outstanding character- 
istic of the American Eepublic, which is unlike 
any other in the world, is that it is a double 
government, a double allegiance. It is a "Ee- 
public of Eepublics." Every citizen feels two 
loyalties, one to his state and the other to his 
nation. In addition to these two, he feels a 
third loyalty. It is to his local Community. 
And just as every man is a better citizen if he 
is first of all devoted to his family, so will he 

34 



ORGANIZING THE COMMUNITY CENTER 

be more loyal to the state and nation, if he is 
loyal to his own Community. 

The Community Center aims to induce citi- 
zens to recognize their responsibility for the 
administration of public business, to become 
active in their own communities, to assist in 
the improvement of local schools, of politics, of 
roads, of the general health, and of housing 
conditions. It is the law of all improvement 
that you must start from where you are. If a 
man cannot love his own Community, which 
he can see, how can he love the whole country, 
which he cannot see? 

The success of the work in any Community 
depends on the amount of public-mindedness 
existing there or the possibility of creating it. 
Those who undertake Community Center work 
ought to guard against the danger of expecting 
too much at the start. To develop public- 
mindedness is a slow and difficult task. It 
ought never to be forgotten that democracy, 
like liberty, is not an accomplishment but a 
growth, not an act but a process. 

This fact should be perceived by pioneers in 
35 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

Community Work, in order that they may not 
be deceived by the passion for size and num- 
bers. A dozen public-minded persons are suf- 
ficient for a beginning. One of the biggest 
movements in history began with a little circle 
of twelve men. They who have discovered the 
meaning of democracy do not need large imme- 
diate results to keep up their courage; they 
only need a cause, and the greatest of all causes 
is constructive democracy. The people will re- 
spond when they understand. In the entire 
history of the Community Center movement, 
there has never been a time when they were 
so ready to respond. Let no worker in any 
Community despise small beginnings. 

The Community Secretary. — Nothing runs 
itself unless it is running down hill. If Com- 
munity work has to be done, somebody has to 
do it. The growing realization of this fact has 
led to the creation of a new profession. The 
term applied to this profession is "Community 
Secretary, ' ' a servant of the whole community. 
This executive should be elected by ballot in a 
public election held in the schoolhouse, and 

36 



ORGANIZING THE COMMUNITY CENTER 

should be supported out of public funds. There 
were in 1918 four such publicly-elected and 
publicly supported Community Secretaries in 
Washington, D. C, and eight more such offi- 
cials were in the process of being created. It 
promises to be one of the most honored and 
useful of all public offices. The qualifications 
for this office are manifestly large and its du- 
ties complex and exacting. The ablest person 
to be found is none too able. The function of 
the secretary is nothing less than to organize 
and to keep organized all the Community activ- 
ities herein described; to assist the people to 
learn the science and to practice the art of liv- 
ing together ; and to show them how they may 
put into effective operation the spirit and 
method of cooperation. Who is equal to a task 
like this ? In addition to intellectual power and 
a large store of general information, one must 
be equipped with many more qualities equally 
important. The seven cardinal virtues of a 
Community Secretary are: Patience, unselfish- 
ness, a sense of humor, a balanced judgment, 
the ability to differ in opinion without differ- 

37 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

ing in feeling, respect for the personality of 
other people, and faith in the good intentions 
of the average man. When one considers the 
requirements for this office, one's first impulse 
is to do what King Solomon did. After mak- 
ing a rarely beautiful description of a wise and 
ideal wife, he ended it by asking, ''but where 
can such a woman be found?" 

Where possible, the Ooanmunity Secretary 
ought to be the principal of the school. In 
thousands of villages and open-country commu- 
nities the teacher's work lasts for only part of 
the year and the compensation is shamefully 
inadequate. This is a great economic waste as 
well as an injury to children. If these teachers 
were made community secretaries, were given 
an all-year-round job, and were compensated 
for the additional work by a living wage, it 
would mean a better type of teacher and a bet- 
ter type of school. The bigger task would not 
only demand the bigger person, but the task 
itself would create them. Moreover, when the 
teacher's activities become linked up with life 
processes, the Community will be the more wiU- 

38 



ORGANIZING THE COMMUNITY CENTER 

ing to support the office adequately. It seems 
clear that the office of Community Secretary is 
the key to the worthier support of the school. 
It will magnify the function of teaching, give 
a new civic status to the teacher, and make 
more apparent the patriotic and constructive 
service which the school renders the nation. 

Board of Directors. — Since the Community 
Center is a cooperative enterprise, it is neces- 
sary that it be democratically organized. The 
next step in its organization, therefore, should 
be to provide the secretary with a cabinet. It 
may be called a Board of Directors, or a Com- 
munity Council, or an Executive Committee. 
Its first function is to give counsel and advice 
to the Community Secretary, to form a forum 
for discussion, out of which may develop wise 
methods of procedure. Its next function is to 
share with the Secretary the responsibilities 
of the work. In every community there are 
men and women who have the ability and lei- 
sure to render public service. As directors they 
would have a recognized position and a chan- 

39 



THE LITTLE DEMOCEACY; 

nel through which they can render more effec- 
tively such a service. 

The Board of Directors or Community Coun- 
cil should consist of the heads of departments, 
so that the entire work of the association may 
be frequently reviewed, and so that overlap- 
ping and duplication of effort may be avoided. 
The directors should meet frequently and the 
meetings should be open to the public. The 
Community Center stands for visible govern- 
ment and daylight diplomacy. 

The Trouble Committee. — ^It is not so difficult 
to organize a Community Center as it is to 
keep it organized. The function of this com- 
mittee is not to make trouble, but to remove 
it. Its task is to discover the causes of trouble 
of various kinds in the community — ^to learn 
the causes of dissatisfaction, to state the prob- 
lems which ought to be solved, to exhibit the 
thing that needs to be done. The work of 
the Trouble Committee is problem making. 

For example, why are country-bred boys 
leaving the farm in such large numbers; is 
farming a profitable industry; to what extent 

40 



ORGANIZING THE COMMUNITY CENTER 

is the food of the country produced by the un- 
paid labor of children; does it pay better to 
rent or own a farm; could an average young 
man earn enough from a farm to pay for it 
by honest labor in a reasonable number of 
years; why do half the girls and boys fail to 
finish the grammar grades in school; is the 
work of transportation and distribution of food 
supplies economically done ; why is the cost of 
living so high. If a Community Center should 
attempt to discover the causes of these unsatis- 
factory conditions, it would be a vital and at- 
tractive program sufficient to occupy it for sev- 
eral years. For the most part, this committee 
holds the key to the success or failure of a Com- 
munity Center. 

Public and Self Support. — The finances of 
an organization usually constitute it& storm 
center. Money is the kind of thing it is diffi- 
cult to get along with and impossible to get 
along without. After a Community Center de- 
termines its plans and policies the next ques- 
tion is finance. Money is properly called 
''ways and means." It is not the end; human 

41 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

welfare is the end. Money is a detail, and 
ought always to be treated as such. 

The superior advantage of a Community 
Center over private organizations is that it 
does not need an amount of money sufficient 
to cause it any distress. To begin with there 
are no dues. The school-house, together with 
heat, light, and janitor service, and in some 
places a portion of the secretary's salary, are 
provided out of public funds. Thus the over- 
head charges are comparatively small. The 
time will doubtless come when the entire ex- 
pense will be provided out of public funds. The 
Community Center needs, for the present, to 
supplement its public funds. The highest sal- 
ary paid out of public funds to a Community 
Secretary in Washington, D. C, is $420 per 
year. This is not a salary but a contribution 
toward a salary. This amount must be in- 
creased if the services of the right type of 
person for this position is retained. Other 
items of expense to be considered are the sta- 
tionery, postage, printing, and clerical work. 
These needs should be met by voluntary ef- 

42 



ORGANIZING THE COMMUNITY CENTER 

fort, and each department of activity ought to 
be self-supporting. These departments should 
contribute a certain percentage of their funds 
to the association as a whole, because its gen- 
eral activities are necessary to the success of 
these departments. The members of the Com- 
munity Association should express their inter- 
est by registering as active members and pay- 
ing a small registration fee. These two sources 
will doubtless net sufficient funds. If they do 
not, then voluntary contributions and enter- 
tainments should supply what is needed. 

The Community Association is a public body. 
As such, what money it raises is public money. 
Since the amount needed to be raised by vol- 
untary effort is smaller than the amount re- 
ceived from public funds, there is little danger 
that large givers will have the opportunity to 
dominate the policies of the Community Cen- 
ter through their gifts. Above all others, this 
is the one danger most to be guarded against. 
Because it is chiefly supported by public taxa- 
tion, the Community Center is a place where 
all can meet on the basis of self-respect, where 

43 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

a man's standing is determined, not by his gifts 
of money, but by character and intelligence. 
Whenever this condition ceases to exist the 
Community Center dies. 

It should be borne in mind, however, that so 
long as the finances are organized democratic- 
ally, the need for the Community itself to raise 
part of its fund is a moral advantage, and is 
social justice. The Community Center is an en- 
terprise for mutual aid in self -development. 
The people are compelled to pay taxes, but 
what they freely choose to contribute to their 
own enterprise is the only trustworthy guide 
to their attitude toward it, and the best evi- 
dence of their devotion to it. There can be 
self -development only where there is freedom. 
Partial voluntary support by a Community in- 
sures local autonomy. 

''Ten Commandments for a Community 
Center." — There are certain formative prin- 
ciples which are basic in the structure of a 
Community Center. Dr. Henry E. Jackson, 
the Government's Community expert, considers 
these so essential to the life of the Community 

44 



ORGANIZING THE COMMUNITY CENTER 

ideal that he has called them **The Ten Com- 
maiidments for a Commimity Center'* and has 
stated them as follows: 

I. It must guarantee freedom of 
thought and freedom in its ex- 
pression, 
IT. It must aim at unity not uniform- 
ity, and accentuate resemblances, 
not differences. 

III. It must be organized democratic- 

ally, with the right to learn by 
making mistakes. 

IV. It must be free from the domina- 

tion of money, giving the right of 
way to character and intelligence. 
V. It must be non-partisan, non-sec- 
tarian and non-exclusive both in 
purpose and practice. 
VI. Remember that nothing will run it- 
self unless it is running down hill. 
VII. Remember that to get anywhere, it 
is necessary to start from where 
you are. 
VIII. Remember that the thing to be 
done is more important than the 
method of doing it. 
43 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

IX. Eemember tliat the water in a well 
can not be purified by painting 
the pump. 
X. Eemember that progress is possible 
only when there is mental hos- 
pitality to new ideas. 

The Constitution. — The constitution of a 
Community Center is a working agreement, a 
clear understanding as to what is to be done 
and who is to do it. A clear statement will 
prevent needless friction and confusion. As 
regards the growth of the work in the Com- 
munity the constitution, if rightly constructed, 
might well serve as propaganda. In fact, a 
good test of the adequacy of a constitution is to 
ascertain if it answers this question, *'What is 
a Community Center and what is its purpose?" 
It will be seen therefore that the constitution 
of a Community Association should be very 
different from that of an ordinary society, 
which merely aims to give information about 
officers and meetings. This one may deeply 
affect the spiritual and economic life of the 
community. 

46 



ORGANIZING THE COMMUNITY CENTER 

*' As the expression of certain ideas in a docu- 
ment known as Magna Charta was a great 
gain in the long fight for freedom in the Eng- 
lish speaking world [says Dr. Jackson] so the 
expression of a Community's new social pur- 
pose may mean new freedom for it. In starting 
a Community Center, an organizing committee 
should be charged with the task of drafting 
and submitting a constitution. If several weeks 
were spent on the task, both in committee work 
and in public discussion, the time would be well 
spent. The educational value of the process 
is too great for the people to miss. In the 
process a considerable number will be educated 
as to the meaning of a Community Center and 
will therefore be equipped to a degree for con- 
ducting its work. 

*'As the word itself suggests, a constitution 
establishes the basis on which friends may stand 
for the accomplishment 'of their common pur- 
poses. Its value is always to be measured by 
the importance of the purpose to be accom- 
plished. Inasmuch as the purpose of a Com- 
munity Center is of the highest value not only 
to the welfare of the local community, but also 
to the welfare of democracy in the nation and 
in the world, the making of its constitution is 
a highly important item in its organization.'* 

47 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

Suggested Program. — The Council of Na- 
tional Defense has suggested a program for 
Community Council work which wiU be espe- 
cially interesting to those newly organized and 
wishing to emphasize work that will directly 
bear on helping to win the war. This program 
is as follows : 

I. Commimiti/ Meetings and Rallies. — The 
Community Council, through its executive sec- 
retary and committees, should hold frequent 
general community meetings, at which — 

1. Reports are made by the committees, or- 
ganizations, and individuals who are doing war 
work. 

2. Community war problems are discussed. 
n. Patriotic education through — 

1. Distribution of educational and patriotic 
material to be supplied by the Committee on 
Public Information, and assistance in executing 
the plans of the Committee for public educa- 
tion. 

2. Holding community war rallies, addressed 
by the ablest speakers available. 

3. Distribution of pamphlets and display of 
posters. 

4. Instruction through the schools. 

48 



ORGANIZING THE COIVIMUNITY CENTER 

III. Reports. — For the purpose of planning 
and following up its work and of informing the 
country and State authorities as to the re- 
sources and work of the community, the Com- 
munity Council should tabulate and file the re- 
sults of its investigations and of the reports 
made to it. 

IV. Food.— 

1. Assisting the county councils in carrying 
out the national agricultural program. Much 
of this work can best be done on a cooperative 
community basis, through the establishment of 
community agricultural conferences, community 
labor, seed and implement exchanges, commu- 
nity canning centers at school-houses, commu- 
nity markets, etc. 

2. Assisting the local Food Administrator in 
carrying out the national food conservation pro- 
gram. 

3. Making the community as nearly as possi- 
ble self-supporting as to food by (1) studying 
last year's food production and food consump- 
tion; (2) devising means for providing within 
the community the articles necessarily import- 
ed during the past year; and (3) education, 
eliminating community food waste, and cutting 
down community food consumption. 

49 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

V. Americanization. — The Community Coun- 
cil, especially in industrial communities, in co- 
operation with the representatives of the Bu- 
reau of Education and the Bureau of Labor, 
should endeavor to increase the number of loyal 
American citizens by — 

1. Educating aliens in English. 

2. Lnpressing aliens with the great ideals of 
America, American standards, the value of 
American citizenship and its duties. 

3. Assisting aliens desirous of naturalization 
in making out their papers, etc. 

VL Commimity Safeguards. — The Commu- 
nity Council should undertake the protection 
of its own district through — 

1. Fire Protection. — Providing proper pro- 
tection for crops and goods in storage, 
through — 

{a) Organization of fire guards and provi- 
sion oi. adequate fire apparatus. 

(fe) Inspection of all places subject to spon- 
taneous combustion, to be sure they are as 
nearly fireproof as possible. 

2. Protection against violence. The provi- 
sion of local guards, if necessary. 

3. Belief. — ^Assist the local chapter of the 

50 



ORGANIZING THE COMMUNITY CENTER 

American Red Cross in its Home Service Work 
for the families of men in national service. 

4. Health. — The safeguarding of local health 
conditions — 

(a) The provision under the leadership of 
the Red Cross of emergency nurses to take the 
places of nurses who have gone to the front. 

(b) Distribution of pamphlets and other 
literature from State and National Health De- 
partments. 

5. Work for School Children. — The assist- 
ance of the school children in carrying out the 
work of the Community Councils should be in- 
trusted to the Junior Red Cross. This is the 
organization for patriotic expression for the 
school children of the country, indorsed by the 
National Education Association. Its work 
covers many of the fields indicated above. 
Under the direction of their teachers as officers 
of the Junior Red Cross, children are to enroll 
for service wherever their work makes for edu- 
cation and better citizenship. 

VU. Labor and Industry. — 

1. Educating boys so that they may be effi- 
cient in helping on the farms in the summer. 

2. Urging vigorous prosecution of the State 

51 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

vagrancy law in each community and campaign- 
ing against idleness. 

3. Informing the proper authorities as to the 
need for enforcement of labor legislation for 
the protection of woman and child workers and 
maintaining conditions of employment. 

VIII. Commtmity Thrift. — ^In addition to 
urging economy in food consumption, Commu- 
nity Councils should — 

1. In cities, in compliance with the requests 
of the Commercial Economy Board of the Coun- 
cil of National Defense, discourage needless re- 
tail deliveries. 

2. Cooperate with the local Fuel Administra- 
tor in the conservation of fuel, especially 
through urging and teaching its economical use. 

3. Assist in relieving railroad congestion 
by- 

(a) Issuing and distributing cooperative 
community orders for goods. 

(b) Cooperating with local receivers and 
shippers of freight to arrange for full carload 
shipments of goods and prompt unloading of 
cars. 

(c) Providing adequate storage facilities. 

(d) Urging merchants to purchase in the 
nearest market. 

52 



ORGANIZING THE COMMUNITY CENTER 

4. Encouraging conservation of other sup- 
plies. 

IX. Community Subscriptions. — The Com- 
munity Council should provide an efficient 
means for soliciting subscriptions to — 

1. Liberty Loans and War Savings Stamps. 

2. The Red Cross, Y. M. C. A., and other or- 
ganizations indorsed by the State Council. 

Efforts should be made to prevent solicita- 
tion in the community by any organization not 
approved by the State Council. 

X. Soldiers^ Aid Work. — 

1. Each community should make sure that all 
drafted, enlisted, or commissioned men from 
that community receive frequent mail, maga- 
zines, etc., from home. 

2. Assistance should be provided to the local 
exemption boards in their arduous work. 

3. In the neighborhood of training camps 
the community can render valuable service by 
providing recreation and entertainment for the 
men in the camps, in cooperation with the local 
representative of the War and Navy Depart- 
ments' Commission on Training Camp Activi- 
ties. 

4. The Community Council should assist the 
Red Cross in providing the greatest possible 

53 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

number of hospital supplies, sweaters, socks, 
and comfort kits, etc., for the soldiers. 

5. In cooperation with the Red Cross, each 
community should provide adequate business, 
legal, and medical advice and aid to soldiers 
and their families. 

XI. Coordmation. — The Community Council 
should consider itself a coordinating agency 
and a clearing house for the war work of the 
churches, fraternal societies, clubs, and other 
organizations and of the individuals of the 
community. There should be no duplication or 
replacement of the work of existing organiza- 
tions, but the effort should be to make this 
work run smoothly and efficiently. In each ac- 
tivity the directors of the Community Council 
should study the situation to determine whether 
some existing agency is already doing satisfac- 
tory work in that field. Where such agency 
exists, it is the duty of the Community Council 
to strengthen and work through it, not to re- 
place it. 

XII. Execution of the Various Requests Is- 
sued by the National Government and hy State 
and County Councils and Branches of the Wom- 
an's Division. — Priority should be given by the 
Community Council to all work expressly re- 

54 



ORGANIZING THE COMMUNITY CENTER 

quested by the National Govemment, National, 
State, or County Councils, or Branches of the 
Woman's Committee in order that a uniform 
national response may be quickly obtained. The 
keynote of efficient decentralization is prompt- 
ness and accuracy by the local agents in carry- 
ing out the requests from a central source. 

Since the State Divisions of the Woman's 
Committee have already departmentalized their 
work along lines generally parallel to those 
suggested in this program, an effort should be 
made, in those communities where the work of 
the Woman's Committee is organized in small 
communities, to combine the two programs or 
departments of work to prevent duplication and 
too much reorganization of existing commit- 
tees. 



CHAPTER III 

A MODEL CONSTITUTION 

The following constitution may be said to be 
a model one, since it was adopted by a highly 
successful Community Center in Washington, 
D. C. This constitution was prepared by Dr. 
Henry E. Jackson to meet the needs of this 
community, and it was adopted, not hastily, but 
after patient discussion in committee and 
thorough thrashing out in public meeting. It 
is now in operation. 

''Each community ought to draft its own con- 
stitution [says Dr. Jackson] not only because 
the needs of Communities vary, and because it 
should be the honest expression of the Com- 
munity's own thought and purpose, but espe- 
cially because a constitution brought from out- 
side and dropped on the people's heads has lit- 
tle value for the Community. Of course it is 
possible for a Community to work over and as- 

56 



A MODEL CONSTITUTION 

similate the constitution of another Community 
until it becomes its own. It should also get help 
and suggestions from as many constitutions as 
it can find." 

The constitution of the Wilson Normal Com- 
munity Association, of Washington, D. C, 
which may well be studied as a model because 
it has been in successful operation for some 
time, follows: 

PEEAMBLE 

We, the people of the Wilson Normal Com- 
munity of the City of Washington, D. C, in 
order to secure the advantages of organized 
self-help, to make public opinion more enlight- 
ened and effective, to promote the education of 
adults and youths for citizenship in a democ- 
racy, to organize the use of the public school 
as the community capitol, to foster a neighbor- 
hood spirit through which the community may 
become a more efficient social unit, to prevent 
needless waste through the duplication of so- 
cial activities, to engage in cooperative enter- 
prises for our moral and material welfare, and 
to create a social order more in harmony with 

57 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

the conscience and intelligence of the Nation, 
do ordain and establish this constitution. 

Abticlb I 

Name 

The name of this organization shall be the 
Wilson Normal Community Association and its 
headquarters the Wilson Normal School build- 
ing. 

Aeticub II 

Location 

The Community shall be defined as follows: 
Beginning at 14th and W Streets, thence north 
on the east side of 14th Street to Monroe Street, 
thence east on the east side of Monroe Street 
and Park Eoad to Georgia Avenue, thence south 
on the west side of Georgia Avenue to Irving 
Street, thence east on the south side of Irving 
Street to Soldiers' Home, thence south on west 
side of Soldiers' Home, McMillan Park and 
Reservoir to College Street, thence west on 
north side of College Street and Barry Place to 
10th Street, thence south on the west side of 
10th Street to W Street, thence west on the 
north side of W Street to 14th Street, the place 
of beginning. 

58 



A MODEL CONSTITUTION 

Aeticle III 

Members 

The members of the association shall be all 
the white adult citizens of this community, both 
men and women. A limited number of non-resi- 
dent members may be received into member- 
ship provided they are not registered members 
of any other organized community. Organiza- 
tions now in operation, which are non-partisan, 
non-sectarian, and whose aim is the public wel- 
fare, such as '^ Citizen Associations," ''Home 
and School Leagues," ''Women's Clubs," 
"College Settlements," "Housekeepers' Alh- 
ances, ' ' desiring to retain their name and iden- 
tity for the sake of cooperation with other 
branches of similar organizations, may become 
departments of this association. There shall be 
no suggestion of superiority or inferiority 
among the departments. The members of each 
department shall have the same standing as all 
other members. 

Aeticle IV 

Officers 

The association shall elect by ballot from its 
own members a Board of Directors, or Com- 

59 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

munity Council, which shall be both a legisla- 
tive- and an executive body. It shall consist of 
not less than six nor more than fifteen mem- 
bers. They shall be elected for a period of 
three years, excepting for the first year, when 
one-third of the number shall be elected for one 
year, one-third for two years, and one-third 
for three years. 

The chairman of the committee in charge of 
each department of the association shall be a 
member of the Board of Directors. A chair- 
man may be appointed by the Board, or select- 
ed by the department itself and confirmed by 
the Board. Chairmen shall have the right to 
select the members of their committees. 

The community secretary, whose public elec- 
tion is provided for by the Board of Educa- 
tion, shall be a member of the Board of Direc- 
tors and a member ex-officio of all committees. 
It shall be his duty to exercise general super- 
vision over all the activities of the association, 
and to nominate by and with the consent of the 
directors, all assistant secretaries. They shall 
have the right to attend all meetings of the 
Board and take part in the discussions, but shall 
have no vote. 

As soon after the annual election as conve- 
60 



A MODEL CONSTITUTION 

nient the directors shall meet to organize and 
shall elect from their own number a president, 
vice-president, and a secretary-treasurer, who 
shall perform the duties usually performed by 
such officers. 

Article V 

Departments 

The Board of Directors is authorized to or- 
ganize and operate departments of activity, 
such as forum, civics, recreation, home and 
school league buying club, and community bank, 
whose activities shall be supervised and whose 
accounts shall be audited by the Board of Di- 
rectors. 

1. Forum Department: The committee in 
charge of this department shall arrange for 
public meetings, at such times as the associa- 
tion may decide, for the free and orderly dis- 
cussion of all questions which concern the so- 
cial, moral, political, and economic welfare of 
the community. It shall select a presiding offi- 
cer for such meetings, secure speakers, suggest 
subjects, and formulate the method of conduct- 
ing discussions. 

2. Recreation Department: The committee 
in charge of this department shall provide and 

61 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACT 

conduct games, dances, community dramas, mu- 
sicales, motion pictures, and shall promote all 
similar play activities with a view to increasing 
the joy, health, and good fellowship among both 
adults and youths. 

3. Civics Department: The committee in 
charge of this department shall provide the 
members with the means of securing informa- 
tion concerning politics, local, national, and in- 
ternational ; it shall stimulate a more intelligent 
interest in government by the use of publicity 
pamphlets; it shall suggest ways in which the 
members may contribute to the economic and 
efficient administration of the city's affairs; it 
shall provide courses of studies for young men 
and women as a preparation for citizenship and 
devise methods of organizing the youth into 
voluntary, cooperative and constructive forms 
of patriotic service. 

4. The Home and School Department: The 
Committee in charge of this department shall 
seek to promote closer cooperation between the 
school and home, the teachers and parents; it 
shall aim to improve the school equipment, to 
secure more adequate support and better hous- 
ing conditions for teachers; it shall organize 
and conduct study classes for youths and 

62 



A MODEL CONSTITUTION 

adults; it shall provide such ways and means 
or remove such obstacles as may be necessary 
to enable all children to remain in school until 
they have finished the grammar grades, 
whether these obstacles be the kind of studies 
now pursued in school, the home conditions of 
the children, or the economic conditions of the 
community. 

5. Buying Club Department : The committee 
in charge of this department shall organize, 
and operate in the school a delivery station for 
food products with a view of decreasing the 
cost of living; it shall establish a direct rela- 
tion between the producer and consumer in 
order to eliminate wastes ; it shall seek to safe- 
guard the people's health by furnishing the 
purest food obtainable; it shall aim to moral- 
ize trade by giving full weight and measure 
and substituting public service for private ex- 
ploitation ; it shall eliminate debt by asking for 
no credit and giving none; it shall practice 
economy and equity in order to secure a larger 
return to the producer and decrease the cost to 
the consumer. 

An annual fee shall be required of all mem- 
bers of the Buying Club, payable quarterly in 
advance to defray operating expenses, the 

63 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

amount of the fee to be determined by the com- 
mittee, and it shall be decreased or increased 
as the number of members and volume of busi- 
ness warrant. All members shall secure their 
goods at the net wholesale cost price. 

Goods shall be sold only to members of the 
Buying Club. Membership in the Buying Club 
is open only to members of the association and 
only to those members who are depositors in 
the community bank. 

The Buying Club shall set aside annually a 
sum equal to two per centum of the amount of 
its sales, to be used by the association for the 
purpose of educating its members in the prin- 
ciple and practice of cooperation, until public 
appropriations are sufficient to provide the 
means for such education. 

The club shall set aside annually a sum equal 
to one per centum of the amount of its sales as 
a reserve fund to cover unexpected losses. 

The committee in charge of the Buying Club 
shall serve without compensation, but may em- 
ploy one or more executives to conduct the busi- 
ness of the club, who shall receive compensa- 
tion for their services, the amount of which 
shall be fixed by the committee, but the amount 

64 



A MODEL CONSTITUTION 

shall be determined, as far as possible, on a 
percentage basis according to service rendered. 
All checks, drafts, or notes made in the name 
of the club shall be countersigned by the chair- 
man of the directing committee. The executive 
in charge of the buying club shall be required 
to give a surety bond. 

6. Community Bank Department : The com- 
mittee in charge of this department shall or- 
ganize and conduct a credit union bank for 
members of the association in order to capi- 
talize honesty and to democratize credit, and 
to multiply the efficiency of their savings by 
pooling them for cooperative use. It shall be 
known as the '^ Community Bank." It shall 
receive savings deposits both from children and 
adults and shall make loans. It shall, if pos- 
sible, be a part of the curriculum of the school, 
at least as regards deposits of children. The 
committee in charge shall serve without com- 
pensation, but may employ one executive to 
conduct its business who shall be required to 
furnish a surety bond. 

The bank shall make loans only to individual 
members of the association and to the Buying 
Club for productive purposes, but no loan shall 
be made to any member of the committee in 

65 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

charge of the bank. Deposits may be received 
from those other than members. 

The bank shall issue no capital stock, but 
shall charge entrance fees, which shall be used 
as a reserve fund and returned to depositors 
when they withdraw from membership. 

The bank may make small short-time loans 
secured only by the character and industry of 
the borrower. It may make long-time loans, 
secured by mortgage, character and industry, 
to young men and women for the purpose of 
helping them to secure houses in which to start 
homes, and the payment of such loans may be 
made on the amortization plan. 

The rate of interest charged for all loans 
shall be five per centum. The amount of inter- 
est allowed on deposits shall be the net profit 
after operating expenses are paid. The bank 
shall use no other bank as a clearing house 
which is not under the supervision of the United 
States Government. All loans shall be made 
by check and all such checks shall be counter- 
signed by the chairman of the directing com- 
mittee. 

An amount equal to one-half of one per 
centum of its deposits shall be set aside as a 
reserve fund. An amount equal to ten per 

66 



A MODEL CONSTITUTION 

centum of its deposits shall be invested in Fed- 
eral Farm Loan Bonds, Liberty Bonds, or in 
other Federal, State, or Municipal Bonds. 

The Community Bank shall be operated not 
on the principle of unlimited, joint, and several 
liability of its members, but it shall have the 
right to demand pro rata payments from them 
to meet any loss through unpaid loans, pro- 
vided the reserve fund is not sufficient, to cover 
such losses. 

Article VI 

Cooperation 

There shall be no dues for membership in the 
community association, the dues having already 
been paid through public taxation, but the as- 
sociation, by voluntary subscription and in 
other ways, may raise funds to inaugurate or 
support its work, if the amount received from 
public appropriation is insufficient to meet its 
needs. 

The association may unite with other simi- 
lar associations in the District of Columbia to 
form a community league, in order to conduct 
a central forum or cooperate with each other 
for any other purpose which may serve their 
common welfare. 

67 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACYi 

The association adopts the policy of cordial 
cooperation with the Board of Education, and 
provides that a designated member of the 
School Board may be a member, ex-officio, of 
its Board of Directors. He may attend any of 
its meetings, take part in the discussions, and 
vote on all questions. 

Aeticle VII 

Meetings 

The Board of Directors shall hold monthly 
meetings at such times as they may determine. 
All regular monthly meetings! of the Board 
shall be open meetings. When a vacancy oc- 
curs through death or otherwise, the Board 
may fill the vacancy until the next annual meet- 
ing. If any director shall be absent from three 
successive stated meetings without excuse, such 
absence shall be deemed a resignation. 

Quarterly meetings of the Association shall 
be held on the second Tuesday of January, 
April, July, and October. The April quarterly 
meeting shall be the annual meeting to elect 
officers, hear reports from all departments, and 
to transact such other business as may be nec- 
essary. 

68 



A MODEL CONSTITUTION 

This constitution may be amended at any an- 
nual meeting, or at any quarterly meeting if 
previous notice of the proposed amendment is 
given. In all elections the preferential ballot 
may be used with reference both to officers and 
measures ; the initiative, referendum and recall 
may be employed in such manner as the As- 
sociation itself may determine. 



CHAPTEE IV 

THE COMMUNITY FORUM, THE NEIGHBORHOOD 
CLUB, AND THE HOME AND SCHOOL LEAGUE 

(As Suggested by Dr. Henry E. Jackson, Gov- 
ernment Expert in Commimity Work) 

After a Community Center has been organ- 
ized and placed on a sound working basis, op- 
portunities for constructive work along many 
lines will present themselves in limitless array. 
It would not be wise to suggest any limited plan 
for activities for such an organization, as new 
conditions will develop new problems and the 
Community Center must be left free to handle 
situations as they arise. The Community move- 
ment, old as it is, is but now entering on its 
golden age and no one should attempt to con- 
fine it within any given boundaries. However, 
there are certain activities that are so essential 
to a normal development that it has been 

70 



THE COMMUNITY FORUM 

thought practical to include in this book an. 
outline of the plan upon which they have been 
successfully conducted in various places. The 
outline which follows is that suggested and 
tried out with great success by Dr. Henry E. 
Jackson, the Government's expert in Commu- 
nity work, in his comprehensive bulletin on 
''What Is a Community Center?" 

The Community Forum. — Inasmuch as the 
the right to vote on public policies is now in 
the hands of the average man (and of many 
women), it is of paramount importance that 
they should be given the opportunity to make 
themselves fit to perform this function intelli- 
gently. This is the necessity on which the 
community forum fundamentally rests. It is 
a school for citizenship. The community forum 
is the meeting of citizens in their school-house 
for the courteous and orderly discussion of all 
questions which concern their common welfare. 
A Community may begin with questions in 
which local interest is manifest, such as good 
roads, or public health or the method of rais- 
ing and spending public funds, or methods of 

71 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

production and transportation of food prod- 
ucts. A discussion of these questions will at 
once reveal the fact that they transcend local 
limits. A road is built to go somewhere, and 
it will relate one community to another. Local 
health conditions can not be maintained with- 
out considering ^ther localities, for the cause 
of local disease frequently lies elsewhere. A 
local community pays part of the revenue raised 
by the county. Therefore, the expenditure of 
these funds is the affair of the local community. 
The same is true of the administration of state 
funds. The question of production and trans- 
portation is no longer regarded as a rural 
problem or a city problem, but a national prob- 
lem. The reason why no community should live 
for itself is that none exists by itself. Every 
community is at the center of several concen- 
tric circles. The subjects of most value for dis- 
cussion in a local forum are those which con- 
nect it with county, state, and national inter- 
ests. And herein lies the educational value of 
the forum. 
Ours is a government by public opinion. It 
72 



THE COMMUNITY FORUM 

is obvious that the public welfare requires that 
public opinion be informed and educated. The 
forum is an instrument fitted to meet the most 
urgent public need. It is organized not on the 
basis of agreement, but of difference. It aims 
not at uniformity, but unity. It would be a 
stupid and unprogressive world if all were 
forced to think alike. We are under no obliga- 
tion to agree with each other, but as neighbors 
and as "members of America," it is our moral 
and patriotic duty to make the attempt to un- 
derstand each other. 

Public discussion renders a great variety of 
services to spiritual and social progress. It 
puts a premium on intelligence, liberates a com- 
munity from useless customs, puts a check on 
hasty action, secures united approval for meas- 
ures proposed, creates the spirit of tolerance, 
promotes cooperation, and, best of all, and 
hardest of all, it equips citizens with the ability 
to differ in opinion without differing in feeling. 
This habit can be acquired only through prac- 
tice. The forum furnishes the means for mu- 

73 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

tual understanding. It aims to create public- 
mindedness. 

The Neighborhood Club. — The basic assump- 
tion of the Community Center movement is that 
democracy is the organization of society on the 
basis of friendship. "Man," said Aristotle, 
''is a political animal." He requires the com- 
panionship of his fellows. His happiness is 
largely linked up with their approval. His 
instinctive need for fellowship leads him to 
create a sort of social center out of anjrthing 
available for the purpose. The Post Office has 
served as such a village center, but the free 
delivery of mail is destroying its social uses. 
The corner store has acquired fame as an in- 
formal forum and neighborly club, but the mail 
order house is rapidly robbing it of members 
and at the best it serves only a few. The saloon 
has served the purpose of a neighborhood club 
and friendly meeting place on equal terms for 
large numbers of men, but moral and economic 
considerations have doomed it to extinction. 

The Post Office, corner store, and saloon are 
passing as social centers, but they must be 

74 



THE NEIGHBORHOOD CLUB 

replaced with something better if they are not 
to be replaced with something worse. The Pub- 
lic School therefore stands before an open door 
of opportunity to become a neighborhood club, 
where the people can meet on terms which pre- 
serve their self-respect. Almost every indi- 
vidual lives in the center of several concentric 
circles. There is the little inner circle of his 
intellectual and spiritual comrades; then the 
large circle of his friends ; beyond that the still 
larger circle of those with whom the business 
of life brings him into contact ; and the largest 
circle of all includes all members of the com- 
munity as fellow citizens. There need be no 
conflict among these circles, no suggestion of 
inferiority or superiority. It is never to be 
forgotten that these circles are concentric. The 
experiences of life make them natural and nec- 
essary. 

The Community Center is limited only by this 
last and largest circle. It seeks to broaden 
the basis of unity among men, to multiply their 
points of contact, to consider those interests 
which all have in common. It is not difficult 

75 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

to discover that these are bigger, both in num- 
ber and importance, than the things which sepa- 
rate men. The list of things, which can only 
be achieved as joint enterprises, is long. Eoads 
can only be built by community cooperation. 
Only in this way can the health of the com- 
munity be safeguarded. Food, clothing and 
shelter are the common needs of all. Produc- 
tion and transportation are therefore questions 
of social service. The Greek word for "pri- 
vate," peculiar to myself, unrelated to the in- 
terests of others, is our word for ''idiot." The 
corresponding modern term in our common 
speech is ''crank." The Community Center is 
a sure cure for ' ' cranks. ' ' It aims to promote 
public-mindedness. 

The schoolhouse used as a neighborhood club, 
therefore, renders an invaluable public serv- 
ice. It seeks to create the neighborly spirit nec- 
essary for concerted action. The means em- 
ployed are various — games, folk dances, 
dramas, chorus singing, which requires the sub- 
ordination of self to cooperative effort, dinner 
parties, where the people break bread in cele- 

76 



THE NEIGHBORHOOD CLUB 

bration of their communion with each other as 
neighbors. These activities not only render a 
service to the individual by promoting his hap- 
piness and decreasing his loneliness; but they 
discover in the community unsuspected abili- 
ties and unused resources. To set them to work 
not only develops the individual but enriches 
the community life. 

The same is true of the spirit of play in gen- 
eral; to cultivate the spirit of play not only 
meets an instinctive human need for physical 
and mental recreation, but renders a distinctive 
service to democracy, on account of its spirit- 
ual value. One can carry on the work of de- 
struction by himself but he must organize in 
order to produce. He must cooperate in order 
to play. He can not monopolize the victory, he 
must share it with the team. Play thus de- 
velops the spirit of sportsmanship, the willing- 
ness to play fair, the capacity to be a good 
loser. Cooperation and the spirit of sports- 
manship are indispensable qualities for citizens 
of a democracy. 

77 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

The Home and School League. — The free 
public school is at once the product and the 
safeguard of democracy. The kind of public 
school therefore, which a community has is 
an accurate index of its community conscious- 
ness and its estimate of democratic ideals. 
*'The average farmer and rural teacher," says 
T. J. Coates, ''thinks of the rural school as a 
little equipment where a little teacher, at a 
little salary, for a little while, teaches little 
children little things." The object of the Home 
and School Department of the Community Cen- 
ter is to substitute the word ''big" for the word 
"little" in the above statement, to magnify 
the work and function of the school, to make it 
worthy to occupy a larger place in the people's 
thought and aifection. This is the work which 
Home and School Leagues are now doing. The 
Community Center in no wise interferes with 
their work. It is not a rival but an ally. Its 
plan is to give to and not to take from the Home 
and School League. Indeed it is probable that 
the Home and School League quite generally 
may become the parent organization out of 

78 



THE HOME AND SCHOOL LEAGUE 

which will be bom the Community Center. This 
happens naturally and logically, and in many 
places it is the process of development now in 
operation. When a Home and School League 
e(xpands itself into a Community Center, it 
should become a department of the Community 
Organization. 

By becoming a department of a larger organ- 
ization and limiting itself to its own special 
task, the Home and School League will not 
only do its work better, but it will find it more 
than sufficient to occupy all its time. Its spe- 
cific work is to promote the progress of the 
school and to improve the school equipment. 
To this end, it seeks to secure closer coopera- 
tion between the home and school, the parents 
and teachers. When Madame de Stael asked 
Napoleon what was needed to improve the edu- 
cational system of France, he replied: "Better 
Mothers." The noblest influence on any child 
is that of a good mother. Every school there- 
fore ought to strive to keep a close bond be- 
tween the home and itself. It ought to do so, 
not only for the sake of the children, while they 

79 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

are in school, but also before they come to 
school and after they leave it. To build batr 
tlements around girls and boys at the point of 
their greatest danger, during the period be- 
tween sixteen and twenty-one when they are 
most neglected, is a task worthy in itself to 
enlist the deepest interest and occupy the en- 
tire energy of the Home and School League. 

The three unsettled questions which school- 
masters are always debating — ^the content of 
the curriculum, the method of teaching, and the 
business management — ^will be illuminated, if 
there is brought to bear upon them the view 
point of parents, who own and support the 
schools and who are interested to get the proper 
return on their investment. The same will be 
true of all school questions, if considered from 
the standpoint of the Community Center. It 
will connect school activities with life processes. 
This means vitality for the school. For, as the 
great educational reformer, G-rundtvig, said, 
''Any school that has its beginning in the al- 
phabet and its ending only in book learning is 
a school of death." 

80 



THE HOME AND SCHOOL LEAGUE 

Inasmuch as the key to a better school is a 
better teacher, the Home and School Depart- 
ment of the Community Center should endeavor 
to secure for teachers not only a larger degree 
of moral support, but more adequate financial 
support, which is not the only thing needful, 
but which is the first thing needful towards the 
attainment of this goal. The constructive serv- 
ice rendered to the public by public school 
teachers is as important, if not more important, 
than the service rendered by any class of pub- 
lic servants; and they are not mercenary or 
lacking in heroic devotion to the common wel- 
fare. But it is idle to expect that the right type 
of teacher can be secured or retained without a 
decent living wage. When a Community offers 
such a wage, then and then only will it be able 
to secure the right type of person for the posi- 
tion. In order to retain them after they are 
secured there ought to be a school manse, a 
teacher's house, as part of the necessary equip- 
ment of every school. 

Proper support and housing in order to se- 
cure the right type of teacher, in itself, consti- 

81 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

tutes a worthy program for this department. 
The Home and School Department will natu- 
rally have charge of such extension activities as 
evening classes for youths and adults. These 
classes should be designed not only as a part 
of the work in the Americanization of immi- 
grants but for the better equipment of all citi- 
zens. This states in brief the function of the 
Home and School Department. The nation's 
destiny was decided at the beginuing by the es- 
tablishment, for the first time in the modern 
world, of a free public school system. To keep 
vital its processes, and to improve its equip- 
ment, that it may be still more valuable to the 
people, is the chief business of this department. 



CHAPTER V 

COMMUNITY BUYING AND BANKING 

(As Suggested hy Dr. Henry E. Jackson, Gov- 
ernment Expert in Comrmmity Work.) 

Theee is nothing new or startling in the idea 
of cooperative buying. England had, at the 
beginning of the war, 4,000 successful ''Co- 
operative Societies" which handle an annual 
business exceeding $600,000,000, and the experi- 
ments that have been made so far in this coun- 
try have been based somewhat on England's 
experience. These societies buy supplies of all 
kinds, including food and clothing, and the plan 
under which they operate is a demonstrated 
success. It is an interesting fact that similar 
societies operating in this country have not 
succeeded, and while the plan of the English 
organizations is well worthy of consideration, 
it has been necessary to adapt this plan tO' 

83 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

American ideas and methods. Americans are 
too rich and too individualistic thus far, and 
they have not learned sufficiently the lesson of 
true cooperation. The Buying Club as it has 
heen established in America is not a shop, in the 
English sense, where goods are weighed and 
bandied and stored, but a store in the original 
American sense — a store house, a distribution 
station where goods are kept in their original 
<}ontainers. 

As an evidence that the Buying Club is not 
an invention or an inspiration of the present 
day the following item published in a paper of 
Washington, D. C, of February 5, 1868, is of 
interest : 

'^The matter of cooperative stores is now 
occupying considerable attention in Washing- 
ton, and various enterprises of the sort have 
Ijeen started or are in embryo. The follow- 
ing embodying the most successful plan now in 
operation in England, will be of interest to 
those connected with similar institutions here. 
It is a store established in London, called the 
Commercial and General Society. The quality 
of the goods it retails is first rate, its managers 

84 



COMMUNITY BUYING AND BANKING 

having no personal interest in selling inferior 
or unduly cheap goods, and it freely accepts 
any customers who may present themselves on 
a subscription of five shillings a year. Its 
pricebook also offers a useful guide for those 
who do not wish to be cheated in their house- 
keeping. It delivers its goods free, and to fa- 
cilitate the payment of goods before delivery 
its members are allowed to open deposit ac- 
counts at the store in sums of not less than 
five pounds. These deposit accounts are deb- 
ited with the amount of each order and can 
be balanced at any time and any surplus with- 
drawn on application to the management. 
There is no risk in such an undertaking, for 
the custom of the subscribers is certain, and it 
is now accurately known what percentage must 
be charged for waste, attendants and other nec- 
essary expenses. Goods are purchased at 
wholesale and sold to subscribers at cost, ex- 
penses and a small margin of profit, which, at 
the end of the year, is redivided among the as- 
sociates in proportion to their purchases." 

The leading features of this plan as outlined 
are embodied in the modem Buying Clubs of 
to-day; but there is this difference — ^the club is 

85 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

an activity of an organization whose members 
liave been educated in cooperation, which, as 
one expert has expressed it, is a state of mind. 
Experience has seemed to teach that, in Amer- 
ica at least. Buying Clubs formed for business 
reasons alone, and operated independently, are 
rarely successful ; that their greatest usefulness 
will come from their being linked up with other 
cooperative enterprises. However, since co- 
operative buying and banking have been oper- 
ated with notable success in England, Denmark 
and other countries there is little doubt that, 
as parts of our "Little Democracies" in Amer- 
ica today they can not fail of success. 

It has been said that three things are neces- 
sary to success in any practical cooperative en- 
terprise. These are, a desire to save, good 
business sense, and the spirit of cooperation. 
Of these by far the greatest is cooperation. It 
is significant that the cooperative societies of 
England not only gave the name ''society" to 
their organization, but also devote two and a 
half per cent of their annual profits to the 

86 



COMMUNITY BUYING AND BANKING 

education of their members in the principle and 
practice of cooperation. Thus there have grown 
up in these stores real centers of social activi- 
ties. In America we are going at it in the 
reverse way — ^we are starting our cooperative 
enterprises in our social centers, though the 
principle involved is the same. 

To acquire the spirit and method of coopera- 
tion requires a slow process of education. 

**The chief danger to be guarded against 
[says Dr. Jackson] is the common tendency on 
the part of Americans to demand the fruit the 
day the tree is planted. While the spirit of 
cooperation is difficult to acquire, like all other 
good things, it is worth all it costs. Coopera- 
tion in buying and banking is in itself the best 
means for moral culture. Its educational value 
is of the highest. It minimizes the evil of debt, 
cultivates self-control and self-reliance, checks 
reckless expenditure, develops a sense of re- 
sponsibility, quickens intelligence and public 
spirit, and prepares citizens for self-govern- 
ment. The sehoolhouse is not only the place to 
acquire these educational values and coopera- 
tive virtues, but it also furnishes the inspiration 

87 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

for success in the process, because the Ameri- 
can public school is itself the most successful 
social enterprise yet undertaken in this or any 
other nation.*' 

A Successful Experiment. — ^A very successful 
experiment in cooperative buying has been 
made in Washington City, in connection with 
a well organized Community Center. An ex- 
perienced buying agent is employed who re- 
ceives a commission on all goods handled. The 
most commonly used articles were selected for 
the initial trial — butter, eggs, coffee, etc. Per- 
ishable goods were generally avoided. During 
the Christmas season the buying agent ar- 
ranged with a producer to supply seventy-five 
turkeys. The producer received slightly more 
than he would have received wholesale and the 
consumer paid 36 cents a pound, whereas the 
market price was 45 cents. Very interesting 
also was the experiment in buying eggs, which 
were then selling in Washington at 85 cents a 
dozen. Producers were getting 50 cents a dozen 
wholesale ; the Community Buyer paid 55 cents, 
allowing five per cent for handling; an addi- 

88 



COMMUNITY BUYING AND BANKING 

tional five per cent was added to this for ex- 
penses by the Buying Club, and then consumers 
got their eggs for 60 cents a dozen, thereby sav- 
ing 25 cents a dozen, and the producer got 5 
cents more than he would have received at 
wholesale. This plan is cooperative in all that 
the word implies as it benefits the producer as 
Well as the consumer. When a certain article 
is to be bought, letters are sent out to members 
informing them of this fact, so that they may 
take advantage of it if they wish to do so. 

Linking Town and Country Communities. — 
A practical and far-reaching plan was put in 
operation by this same Community Associa- 
tion which seeks to definitely link the rural 
community with a community in the city. In 
a neighborhood fifteen miles from the city the 
community was organized to supply the needs 
of the certain community in the city, and thus 
two neighborhoods cooperated to the mutual 
advantage of all. It is necessary always to get 
for the producer prices that are a little better 
than he gets at wholesale and to deliver goods 
to the consumer at a lower price than he can get 

89 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

them through the ordinary channels. The 
Buyer should see to it that only the best goods 
are bought, and therefore buying through the 
club insures standard quality. This particular 
Community Association decided upon a label 
for all goods purchased through the Commu- 
nity Buying Club, and it is expected that this 
label will come to be the trademark of first- 
class goods at moderate prices. Every effort 
is made to standardize all goods handled. 

An Experiment in Milk. — ^A very interesting 
experiment has been made in the purchase and 
distribution of milk. The plan followed was 
agreeable not only to the consumer and to the 
producer but to the dealer as well. Consumers 
got their milk 3.13 cents per quart cheaper than 
they were getting it. There were sixty-five 
licensed milk dealers in the city where this 
experiment was tried, all traversing the same 
territory, all making out monthly bills and 
doing book-keeping, all losing a certain per- 
centage on unpaid bills, etc. About twenty of 
them were delivering milk in the territory in- 
cluded in the Community Center. After the 

90 



COMMUNITY BUYING AND BANKING 

plan for cooperative buying was put in opera- 
tion there was but one dairyman delivering and 
milk was left from door to door like mail. 

It is advisable before starting cooperative 
milk buying to get orders for three hundred 
and twenty quarts, or eighty gallons, a day. 
This is a full day's work for one man and one 
team. Milk should be paid for in advance by 
the ticket system, at least a week's supply 
being sold to each customer. ''Joining" the 
Cooperative Milk Buying Club consists in hand- 
ing in one's name to the buying agents, who 
should be on duty each day from 9 to 9.30 A. M., 
and from 3 to 4 P. M., and purchasing a 
week's tickets. Thereafter tickets may be had 
from the agent or from the delivery man. The 
milk furnished must, of course, be standard in 
quality. All consumers are urged to take at 
least one quart a day. It requires as much la- 
bor to fill, clean, and deliver a pint bottle as it 
does one holding a quart. 

Members of Community Buying Clubs are 
asked to adopt three reforms ; First, to get milk 
from one source through the Buying Club so 

91 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

that it can be delivered like mail from door to 
door; second, pay cash in advance for at least a 
week's supply of tickets; fhird, replace the bot- 
tles that are broken. The unavoidable losses 
connected with the sale and distribution of milk 
are, duplication of routes, bookkeeping, unpaid 
bills, night delivery, broken bottles, and pur- 
chase of small amounts. Three of these losses 
alone, based on estimate of ten distributors, cost 
the consumer 3.13 cents a quart. The amount 
saved depends on the number of reforms adopt- 
ed and the number of people who adopt them. 
"Whatever the amount may be it belongs to the 
consumer. The amount saved, however, should 
be shared with the producer; otherwise the 
question threatens to be not how to get milk 
at reasonable prices but how to get milk at 
all. In cases where consumers can not use a 
quart of milk a day arrangements may be made 
for four deliveries a week. It is quite im- 
portant to note that the dairyman who has the 
largest number of customers gets the order for 
the unit of three hundred and twenty custom- 
ers. Such an experiment as this may be tried 

92 



COMMUNITY BUYING AND BANKING 

in any community. However, the successful 
experiments of which the author has been able 
to leam are those operated in connection with 
a well-organized Community Center. Let it be 
remembered that a Cooperative Buying Club 
unattached to the means of creating the co- 
operative spirit is almost sure to fail. 

The Community Bank. — A very interesting 
development of Community Center work is the 
Community Bank, which not only meets the 
practical need, but cultivates an ethical view 
of money and uses it as a means of moral cul- 
ture. A Community Bank is primarily the 
savings bank both for children and adults. As 
regards children it ought, so far as possible, 
to be a part of the curriculum of the school. 
Such banks are now conducted in many schools 
for children. Cooperative banks are conducted 
for adults in some states under the name of 
credit-unions. New York State has a good 
law on credit-unions, on which the laws of other 
states have been modeled. 

But a real Comimunity Bank is designed to 
serve other purposes than those of saving. Its 

93 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

aim is to multiply the efficiency of the people ^s 
savings by pooling them for cooperative uses. 
Its aim is to capitalize character and to democ- 
ratize credit. It serves a community use by 
enabling the people to do jointly what they can 
not do separately. By clubbing their resources, 
they can use their own money for their own 
productive purposes. 

Such a bank, operated for the common wel- 
fare, will not only furnish the working capital 
for community enterprises, but will also be a 
loan society. It will make small short time 
loans to its members on reasonable terms. It 
will thus become the salvation of the poor from 
the tyranny and degradation of the loan-shark. 
It will also make large long-time loans to young 
men and women, who desire to marry and start 
homes, in order to enable them to become the 
owners of houses. It will permit them to re- 
pay the loan on the amortization plan. No 
community could render a more statesman-like 
service to its members. The service already 
rendered by Building and Loan Associations, 
which are in fact cooperative banks, is a guar- 

94 



COMMUNITY BUYING AND BANKING 

antee of the success of the plan. There are 
7,034 such associations with a membership of 
3,568,342 and assets amounting to $1,696,707,- 
041. These figures are eloquent and tell a sig- 
nificant story. They show how ready is the re- 
sponse of men to the opportunity of owning 
their own houses and that this opportunity 
needs to be vastly extended. The motto of the 
United States League of these associations is 
* * The American Home, the Safeguard of Ameri- 
can Liberties. ' ' The motto is both sentimental 
and accurately true. The well-being of a na- 
tion depends primarily upon the existence of 
conditions under which family life may be pro- 
moted and fostered. The family is the true 
social unit, older than church or state and more 
important than either. The welfare of family 
life is every statesman's chief concern. 

The Community Bank enters not only a vital- 
ly important, but a practically unoccupied field, 
and will meet felt needs unmet at present. The 
cooperative handling of credit is not new. It 
has been done in Europe for fifty years with 
marked success. The Conununity Bank is the 

95 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

adaptation to American conditions of the Raif- 
feisen Bank of Germany, the Lnzzatti Bank of 
Italy and the Government Bank of New Zea- 
land. It is a democratic bank, that is, it is of 
the people in that it receives the people's 
money ; it is hy the people, in that it is operated 
by the people themselves; it is for the people, 
in that the money is used for the welfare of 
the people who saved it. 

A Community Bank's ability to render these 
needed public services depends wholly on the 
people's desire and capacity to save and their 
willingness to pool their savings. To cultivate 
the habit of thrift is the first necessity. That 
America needs to acquire this habit is too obvi- 
ous to need comment. Americans are the least 
provident of peoples. Compared with a list of 
fourteen other nations, the number of people 
out of every thousand who have savings ac- 
counts is only about one-sixth as many in Amer- 
ica as in the nation highest on this list and 
less than one-half as many as in the nation low- 
est on the list. Switzerland stands highest with 
554. Denmark is next with 442. The lowest 

96 



COMMUNITY BUYING AND BANKING 

is Italy with 220. But in America it is only 99. 

The economic welfare of a Community, how- 
ever, is not the most important result which 
the habit of thrift produces. Since money is 
the commonest representative of value and a 
symbol of the property sense, it is the best 
practical means of moral culture. A Com- 
munity Bank will furnish the best antidote for 
the common desire to get something for noth- 
ing, ''the determination of the ownership of 
property by appeal to chance," the habit of 
gambling, which is distorting the moral sense 
of all classes of people. 

The Community Bank is designed to promote 
an ethical view of money. When we consider 
that if a man earns a hundred dollars for a 
month's labor, he has put into this money his 
physical force, his nervous energy, his brain 
power, that part of his life has been given away 
in return for it, then money becomes a sacred 
thing. When we consider the humiliation and 
suffering of a destitute old age entailed by a 
lack of economy, then the need of thrift as- 
sumes a new significance. When one considers 

97 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

how manifold are the bearings of money on the 
lives of men and how many are the virtues with 
which money is mixed up, honesty, justice, gen- 
erosity, frugahty, forethought and self-sacri- 
fice, an ethical view of it is unescapable. 

A small competency is necessary to make life 
what it ought to be for every man, especially 
in a democracy. "Whoever has sixpence," 
said Carlyle, '4s sovereign over all to the ex- 
tent of that sixpence, commands cooks to feed 
him, philosophers to teach him. Kings to mount 
guard over him, to the extent of that sixpence. ' ' 
An assured competence, however small, gives 
the priceless blessing of independence. Not 
only personal health and happiness, but social 
and political independence are involved in a 
man's saving fund. The kind and amount of 
service which a Community Bank can render to 
democratic ideals is beyond calculation. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE COMMUNITY GAEDEN 

{Plcm Recommended by Prof. Hugh Fmdlay, 

U. S. Department of Agriculture, Formerly 

of Syracuse University.) 

Reports of gardens conducted in the first 
year of the War in response to appeals from 
the Government that every community feed it- 
self are almost unbelievable. The Vacant Lot 
and Yard Improvement Association of Newark, 
N. J., raised food valued at $114,000. There 
was organized effort that brought this amazing 
result. The Muncie Garden Association, of 
Muncie, Indiana, placed 450 gardens under culti- 
vation which produced food valued at $30,000. 
The value of food produced in the six Com- 
munity and City Gardens of Syracuse, N. Y., 
was estimated at $50,000. In these places ex- 
perts were employed and the entire project was 

99 



THE LITTLE DEMOCEACY 

handled on a business basis. Ten policemen at 
Pueblo, Colorado, raised food valued at $1,000 
by working in spare moments. The children of 
the Delaware County Children's Home in In- 
diana formed an association and raised among 
other things, eighty bushels of onions; 25 
bushels of navy beans ; 800 bushels of com ; put 
up 38 gallons of sauerkraut and canned 4,000 
quarts of preserved food and jellies, in addition 
to fattening fourteen hogs for winter use. 

In this book it is proposed only to deal with 
organization and to suggest the best method of 
setting up the machinery necessary for the suc- 
cessful conduct of a Community Garden. No 
such project should be undertaken until those 
directing it have secured from the Department 
of Agriculture at Washington, or its state rep- 
resentatives the best information available on 
the preparation and cultivation of the soil, 
preventive measures against plant disease, etc. 
The Department issues a great many valuable 
bulletins, which will be sent free upon request. 
A wealth of material is also available through 
The National Food Garden Commission, Mary- 

100 



THE COMMUNITY GARDEN 

land Building, Washington, D. C. The plant- 
ing charts issued from this oflSce are especially 
commended to every gardener. 

The Directing Organization. — Any group of 
people in any community, large or small, may 
organize for Community Garden Work. The 
most successful gardens are those inaugurated 
and operated under the auspices of some wom- 
an's club or organization, whose efforts are 
supported, financially and otherwise, by Farm 
Bureaus, State Agricultural Colleges, or other 
established centers of agricultural knowledge 
and experience. To launch the project proper- 
ly and with most promise of success some cap- 
ital is required, the amount depending on the 
size of the community and the number of gar- 
dens and gardeners. In one to^\^l where a 
highly successful Community Garden is oper- 
ated, the work was started on a fund of $1,200 
cheerfully subscribed by firms and individuals. 
There is no danger of the Community Garden 
idea being unpopular. There are no arguments 
against it and many for it. 

Employ a Supervisor. — Having secured a 
101 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

directing organization or having organized a 
Garden Club, enlisted the cooperation of the 
authorized agricultural agencies of the state 
and secured a fund with which to start, the 
next step is to employ a practical gardener 
as supervisor. It is best to select a man who 
knows the soil as well as the people of the 
section in which he is to work; but unless one 
is available in whom the people have fullest 
confidence, it is better to seek, through the 
state Agricultural agencies, a man of experi- 
ence, scientific knowledge and executive ability 
whom they can recommend. All past experi- 
ence teaches that it is best to pay the Super- 
visor a salary that will justify him in concen- 
trating his interest and in giving his entire 
time to the work. He should have a telephone, 
and if possible, an automobile should be placed 
at his disposal. With an automobile it is pos- 
sible for the Supervisor to visit from ten to 
one hundred gardens each day. 

Little difficulty will be found in getting 
ground. No firm or individual having an idle 
tract of land will deny the use of it to the Com- 

102 



THE COMMUNITY GARDEN 

munity Gardeners, and all public and private 
vacant land is asked for. It will be found ad- 
visable to divide the town or city into six sec- 
tions in order that demonstrations may be held, 
lectures given, questions answered, etc., at least 
one day a week in each section. 

Having secured a fund, headquarters, super- 
visor, and the ground, and having divided the 
community into sections for convenience of 
operation, the organization is ready to begin 
actual work. 

Arouse Public Interest. — The success of the 
enterprise is dependent in no small degree 
upon the general public interest it arouses, 
and the first duty of those in charge is to enlist 
the active and enthusiastic support of the news- 
papers, banks, real estate dealers, and business 
firms, as well as leading citizens. In every 
town where the Community Garden has been 
successful a newspaper, bank or other public 
institution, or some public spirited individual, 
has offered prizes for the best gardens. One 
patriotic citizen in a small city gave $1,000 in 
prizes which was shared in by about 130 per- 

103 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

sons. It is said that this gift resulted in at 
least $50,000 crop yield. The winner in this 
contest was Mrs. Eachel E. Salisbury, 74 years 
of age. In her written statement she said she 
respaded all the soil in her 136x80 foot garden 
after plowing and picked out by hand fourteen 
bushels of quack grass roots. In doing this she 
lifted more than 109 tons of soil and it was 
all done before June 1. Every school should 
be visited and interest of the children should 
be aroused early. ' ' War Garden Guards ' ' have 
been organized with fine results among the so- 
called ''bad boys" of the city. They should 
be distinguished from ordinary individuals by 
attractive buttons which they invariably wear 
with pride. Where "War Garden Guards" 
have been organized there has been a notable 
absence of stealing, rock throwing, etc. 

The Model Garden. — A model garden, cen- 
trally located, should be started early. This 
should be operated and worked by members of 
the directing organization and should be used 
for demonstrations if other gardeners care to 
watch its progress from time to time. The 

104 



THE COMMUNITY GARDEN 

plowing and the seed should be furnished by 
the organization and charged to operating ex- 
penses and the products should be given to the 
poor or to the families of enlisted men. 

Duties of Supervisor. — The first actual work 
of the Supervisor is to examine and analyze 
the soil of the prospective gardens. This may 
best be done through the Farm Bureau of the 
State Agricultural College where facilities and 
expert advice are available. The soil analysis 
enables the Supervisor to give practical advice 
to gardeners as to fertilizer, etc., and means 
that the maximum of results may be obtained if 
instructions are faithfully followed. 

A man should be hired to do the plowing, 
$6 to $8 a day being the average price paid 
for this work. Helpers may be used as needed, 
grown people receiving thirty cents and chil- 
dren fifteen cents an hour. When the plow- 
ing is completed, the lots should be staked off, 
and it is advisable to have committees from 
the respective sections to oversee this part of 
the work. Lots 50 by 100 feet are advised, with 
paths two feet wide. 

105 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

When this stage of the preparation has been 
reached, the gardeners are notified that the 
ground is ready. The cost of plowing is 
divided by the number of lots and each person 
taking a lot is charged his or her share of the 
cost. After various experiments, it has not 
been found advisable to give free seed to the 
gardeners. Often those who are not able to buy 
seed are timid about asking for it and get none. 
The Supervisor should have ready lists of seeds 
desirable, advice as to varieties, etc., and should 
be always willing to answer questions. It is 
important to have a tool-house erected on each 
of the six Community Gardens, where tools can 
be kept and where notices of demonstratipns, 
meetings, etc., and weather forecasts can be 
posted. This bulletin-board will be found a 
great convenience both to the directors and to 
the gardeners. The cost of the tool-house 
should be borne by the League and the amount 
collected later from the gardeners, who are 
asked to assume their share of the cost. A 
few simple but good tools are advised. 

The Foreign Gardener. — Professor Hugh L. 
106 



THE COMMUNITY GARDEN 

Findlay, for a number of years Professor of 
Horticulture at Syracuse University, and later 
of the United States Department of Agricul- 
ture, is considered an authority on the manage- 
ment of Community Gardens. As Supervisor 
and Director of the strikingly successful gar- 
dens at Syracuse, N. Y., Professor Findlay 
worked out some practical ideas in a field that 
was almost untried. His advice is worth fol- 
lowing. Where there is a large foreign element 
among the population Professor Findlay 
strongly advises allowing the gardeners to 
farm in their own way. In fact, while he ad- 
vocates a definite and business like organiza- 
tion, accurate records, etc., he opposes a policy 
of dictation. ''People have their own ideas — 
maybe they have started planting or laying off 
their groundl before the movement is under 
way. I never find it wise to discourage them 
by finding fault with what they have done. It 
is better to say, 'Have you ever tried this wajV 
and gently lead the gardener to a more suc- 
cessful way.'^ In one of his Community Gar- 
dens in Syracuse Professor Findlay had 193 

107 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

Poles cooperating most happily and with great 
success. The Commandant in charge of the 
garden was the Priest to whom the people had 
been accustomed to look for guidance and in 
whom they had full confidence. Following the 
system of their native land these Polish gar- 
deners, in staking off their ground, provided 
for no walks, as they had been taught that 
every inch of ground must be utilized. 

Early Start Important. — Nothing contrib- 
utes more definitely to the success of the Com- 
munity Garden than an early start in every 
line of activity. While the gardeners are de- 
ciding what to plant, getting their seed and pre- 
paring their ground, members of the organiza- 
tion directing the work should have no idle 
moments. Prizes are to be arranged, for 
grown-ups and for children, and announcements 
of these should be made early. Interest gen- 
erated in the early days of the work must be 
kept up to the high water mark. Talks must 
be made in the schools, as well as in all places 
where numbers of people gather. 

Public Demonstration. — ^If the Community 
108 



THE COMMUNITY GARDEN 

Gardeners are fortunate enough to live within 
easy reach of an Agricultural College it will 
be found very stimulating and instructive to 
have demonstrations conducted by the experts 
of the faculty. Members of the directing or- 
ganization should see to it that automobiles 
are furnished so that many may be enabled to 
attend who could not do so otherwise. It is 
well to have the first of these demonstrations 
as early in the season as possible in order that 
the gardeners may gain helpful information 
regarding their preliminary plans. 

As the work progresses, the Supervisor will 
find that he is busy every moment. He should 
neglect no call, for such neglect is sure to be 
felt in the community from which the call has 
come. As the season advances and the gar- 
dens grow, the people who work together day 
after day get well acquainted and the garden 
is the one topic of interest and conversation. 
A bit of information spreads rapidly and all 
take advantage of a timely suggestion or a 
warning from headquarters. The regular vis- 
its, demonstrations and inspection tours of the 

109 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

Supervisor grow more and more important. 
The best hour for demonstrations is between 
seven and nine o'clock in the evening, as the 
majority of the gardeners work at that time. 
No small part of the duties of the Supervisor 
consists in diagnosing cases of sickness among 
the plants and prescribing the remedy. An 
even greater service, however, is in giving ad- 
vice as to preventive measures, ^nd in teach- 
ing the gardeners how to look for early symp- 
toms of disease and how to treat the plants 
promptly and effectively. 

Practical Record Cards. — From the very be- 
ginning, accurate and complete records of 
every day's work should be kept. The Super- 
visor should make a complete monthly report 
of his activities to the organization directing 
the work as well as to the agricultural agen- 
cies cooperating. This report should include: 
(1) telephone calls, (2) demonstrations, (3) 
visits to gardens, (4) record of problems 
solved, (5) record of problems unsolved, (6) 
record of best articles found in local papers, 
(7) expenses, with receipts, for all expendi- 

110 



THE COMMUNITY GARDEN 

tures. In addition to this report the Super- 
visor should keep an accurate record of the 
separate gardens. While the Supervisor should 
be responsible for this record, the information 
should come direct from the gardener. The 
record should contain the name of the man who 
gave the use of the land, the man who plowed 
it, the gardener; kind of soil, crops, and gen- 
eral results. 

The record cards arranged by Professor 
Findlay which were used successfully in a num- 
ber of Community Gardens will be found on 
pages 112 and 113. 

Plcm of Garden Commission. — The National 
Food Garden Commission suggests the follow- 
ing as a plan of organization for the Commu- 
nity Garden; after the appointment of a Gar- 
den Committee by the Mayor: 

1. That the committee through its proper 
agents secure land in or around the city limits, 
or close enough to be within working reach of 
the citizens of the city not otherwise engaged 
in agriculture. 

2. These lands are to be classified in sub- 

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113 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

divisions : (a) Of residents who are not able to 
work them, (b) Single lots not occupied by 
residents, (c) Larger plots of land; all prop- 
erly classified as to acreage on sub-division 
plots. 

3. Secure all available barnyard manure or 
other local material for fertilizing these lands, 
and have it put on the plowed lands at once. 

4. Ascertain as early as possible what com- 
mercial fertilizers will be needed in addition 
to the other fertilizers, to insure maximum 
crops in all cases, and order this conamercial 
fertilizer early. Shipping facilities are in such 
condition that this fertilizer must be ordered 
early to insure delivery in time for spring use. 

5. The committee will find out as rapidly 
as possible who will work gardens and assign 
them land according to the circumstances and 
conditions. 

6. Definite contracts should be made, bind- 
ing the land owner, as well as the worker, so 
as to avoid confusion and disappointment. 

7. Every lot or garden should be numbered 

114 



THE COMMUNITY GARDEN 

and careful record be kept of the name and 
address of the owner and the worker. 

8. A seed supply should be investigated at 
once, and immediate steps taken to secure and 
distribute them. Supplies of necessary imple- 
ments also should be investigated and secured, 
without delay. 

9. Appropriate committees should be 
brought into service, and definite divisions of 
the city assigned to each member, so as to in- 
sure against neglect or duplication of effort. 

10. There should be a central office kept 
open for carrying on this work, and one field 
manager should be appointed to have entire 
supervision of this office and the field workers ; 
but of course acting under the general direc- 
tions of the executive committee. 

Go to a bank and tell them your plans, li 
you pick out an institution that is alive it will 
put up a half dozen prizes of $5 each in the way 
of savings account and it will turn over the 
facilities of its real-estate department to set 
aside available land for the planting. This will 
be one of the best thrift advertisements the 

115 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

bank can possibly spend money on. Then go i6 
your newspapers and tell them what is doing. 
Keep them informed all the time on every step 
of progress made. They want the stories but 
do not make them come after them. In other 
words, organize this community work on a 
business basis and go into it with the same 
system that you would put into operation if 
you were opening a store. 

About Awarding Prises. — The point basis 
was used successfully in prize contests in many 
of the Community Gardens last year. Under 
the system which was generally adopted, thirty 
points were allowed for general appearance; 
twenty points for absence of weeds; and ten 
points for each of the following: number of 
vegetables, straightness of rows, labels of va- 
rieties and dates of planting, and general rec- 
ord of garden operations. The following rules 
were observed: 

1. All labor required to produce the crops 
in these contests must be performed by the 
contestants, with the exception of the plowing 

116 



THE COMMUNITY GARDEN 

and harrowing. Suggestions from parents or 
guardians are encouraged. 

2. There must be a record of seed planted, 
date of germination, and date of harvesting, 
also the amount and kind of vegetables taken 
from each garden. 

3. A record of insects found and what has 
been done to control them must be kept. 

4. Kecords of plants that die, and cause 
attributed. 

5. All statements and records must be 
signed by the contestants and two disinterested 
persons appointed by the Garden Committee. 

6. All contestants must exhibit not less than 
five varieties of vegetables with the exception 
of potatoes. 

7. The lots will be measured by the Garden 
Committee and investigated frequently 
throughout the season. The records kept on 
individual blanks will also be recorded so that 
at the end of the season a correct estimate of 
the care and appearance of the garden may be 
made. 

117 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 



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THE COMMUNITY GARDEN 



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THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

8. If weeds are found choldng the vege- 
tables, the contestant is notified. On the sec- 
ond inspection, if the garden is in the same 
condition and no good explanation can be made, 
the contestant is dropped from the contest. 

A very important feature and one that 
should be given special attention is the final 
exhibition by all competitors for the prizes. 

Tables for planting, recommended by the Na- 
tional Emergency Food Garden Commission, 
are found on pages 118 and 119. 



CHAPTER Vn 

THE COMMUNITY MAEKET 

(Plan Recommended by the U. S. Bureau of 
Markets.) 

The object of the community market is tvro- 
f old : to provide a quick and sure market for the 
producer for perishable goods at a reasonable 
profit, and to give consumers who will pay cash 
for their goods and carry them home a dollar's 
worth of actual products for a dollar. The 
elimination of the middleman is not intended. 
The middleman has a distinct function to per- 
form in the working out of the sane economic 
scheme of things. Sometimes there are too 
many middlemen, in which case the superfluous 
ones will be automatically eliminated if the 
plan of operation is a sound one. If the plan 
is not a sound one it will fail. 

The question of public markets is not a sim- 
121 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

pie one. The United States Government has 
considered it of sufficient importance to war- 
rant the establishment of a Department of 
Markets under the Department of Agriculture. 
Previous to 1913 all of the emphasis had been 
placed on production, with the result that the 
problem of distribution began to loom large. 
Farmers found that the net profit from a small 
crop was greater than that from a large crop 
that could not be marketed, to advantage. A 
similar condition developed after the great 
food production drive of 1917 and to meet this 
condition the Bureau of Markets was given an 
additional appropriation for emergency meas- 
ures. 

Scarcely had this country become involved 
in the world war before American women rec- 
ognized that the question of cheaper and niore 
efficient methods of distributing and marketing 
food products, particularly fresh farm prod- 
uce, was to be a leading one. Up to the time 
these women began to consider the question of 
markets, things had been going rather slowly. 
The Bureau of Markets in 1915 sent out a ques- 

122 



THE COMMUNITY MARKET 

tionnaire to 585 cities of 10,000 inhabitants or 
over, and of this number only 189 had munic- 
ipal markets of any kind. ''We can not deny 
that club women and groups of women gener- 
ally have done much constructive agitating,'* 
said an oflScial of the Bureau of Markets. The 
fact is, successful community or retail public 
markets have been set going all over the coun- 
try which will become flourishing municipal in- 
stitutions. In the first year of the war Penn- 
sylvania had twenty-one such markets and New 
Jersey nineteen — for all of which the women 
were directly responsible. The problem of se- 
curing good products more cheaply, thus mak- 
ing an appreciable reduction in the average 
budget which the housewife must set aside for 
food, has always proved a baffling one to every 
agency concerned in the quest. Through the 
personal efforts of the women and their intelli- 
gent and enthusiastic ''agitation," cities, in an 
attempt to aid their population in the war pro- 
gram, are awaking to the fact that they have 
been very lax in assuming proper obligations 
in relation to their food supply. 

123 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

Study Your Field First. — Every locality does 
not need an established municipal market. 
Those who are truly interested in serving their 
country should ascertain a few general facts: 
Has the town or city a municipal or farmer's 
open market? If so, is it conducted according 
to the most approved methods, and are results 
satisfactory to producer and consumer? If not, 
is there need of a market of any type in the 
community! Inasmuch as the usefulness of a 
market depends on the support given it by the 
consumers, the tributary producers, and the 
local dealers, it is well worth while, before 
expending time and money on the project, to 
determine the attitude of these people toward 
it. In meetings called for the purpose or 
through the press, it is possible to ascertain 
the general sentiment. The Bureau of Markets 
advises that if all are apathetic and there is 
no definitely expressed desire for a market, 
then a city's energies might be turned more 
profitably to other lines of improvement. How- 
ever, the women have not always adhered to 
that policy. Apathy and general lack of inter- 

124 



THE COMMUNITY MARKET 

est have not deterred them, and in many cities 
they have educated, agitated and demonstrated 
until all elements have been entirely converted. 

Before any sort of a market project is under- 
taken or planned the best thing to do is to con- 
sult the Bureau of Markets, Department of 
Agriculture, at Washington. The Government 
established it for this purpose and the surveys 
it has made, the plans it has developed, the 
successes and the failures it can cite will prove 
vastly interesting and valuable. The director 
in charge of the project of the Bureau known 
as ''Distribution and City Markets" is always 
ready to extend the helping hand. It is also 
well to bear in mind that every state has its 
Agricultural College, its Farm Bureaus or oth- 
er authorized agencies fitted to deal with such 
matters and the interest and the active cooper- 
ation of all such agencies should be immediately 
sought. 

The City Market. — No set of rules or general 
plan can be suggested that will apply with equal 
success to city and small town community mar- 
kets, as the problems of each class of city and 

125 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

even of each locality are different and must be 
studied individually. City women contemplat- 
ing undertaking a community market would do 
well, after consulting the Bureau of Markets, 
to communicate with those who have estab- 
lished markets in other cities. One of the most 
interesting of these is that opened under the 
auspices of the Woman's City Club of Chicago 
at 90th Street in the South Chicago neighbor- 
hood. From the first the market encountered 
opposition of various kinds from the local mar- 
ket men, from politicians, and from commis- 
sion men. Despite this great handicap the mar- 
ket is successful and is in continuous opera- 
tion. The people of the neighborhood had 
wanted a market for a long time. They are 
interested in the work and like it, and though it 
was established primarily for the families of 
men employed in the steel works and rolling 
mills in South Chicago, it has proved attractive 
to patrons from neighboring districts. No one 
who is not an actual producer is allowed to sell 
in the market, and these people find it profit- 
able as they often sell three or four loads daily. 

126 



THE COMMUNITY MARKET 

The rapidity with which the products are sold 
acts as a safeguard against unsanitary condi- 
tions. The women connected with the enter- 
prise and who are interested in its success be- 
lieve that they have made an opening wedge 
by which women may enter into a trade par- 
ticularly adapted to their capabilities and 
where their experience will be of special serv- 
ice to the public. Chicago women are even dis- 
cussing the feasibility of developing and using 
waterways throughout the middle west for the 
purpose of extending this market service. It 
is confidently asserted that waste has been 
checked in a great degree in Chicago house- 
holds, but that waste does occur on the journey 
from the producer to the consumer is a fact not 
to be disputed. Details of the plan which has 
been followed with so much success in Chicago 
can be had from headquarters of the organiza- 
tion at 120 West Adams Street, Chicago, 111. 

How One City Organized. — Strikingly suc- 
cessful also has been the community market 
estabhshed by the women of Atlantic City. Sev- 
eral women toured by motor through several 

127 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

counties of New Jersey and ascertained that 
tlie farmers of that section had increased their 
production fifty per cent in answer to the war 
emergency call of the Government. Eeturning 
to the city these women called a meeting at 
which a representative of the State Agricul- 
tural Department was asked to speak. The 
speaker said he had long had in mind a com- 
munity market but that he had been unable to 
secure a location. The women immediately 
asked if he would secure the cooperation of the 
farmers provided they could secure the loca- 
tion. The gentleman expressed some doubt. 
He said the problem was a serious one; the 
enterprise had never been carried out success- 
fully, and the farmers were very skeptical of 
such a market. But the women did not intend 
to fall back before the armies of General 
Apathy or even General Opposition. They se- 
cured the permission of the City Commissioner 
to hold the first meeting, as an experiment, on 
a vacant lot. Twenty-three farmers came the 
first day, twenty-eight the second and thirty 
the third. ''By this time," said Mrs. John J. 

128 



THE COMMUNITY MARKET 

White, who was largely instrumental in estab- 
lishing the market, **the hucksters and the re- 
tail dealers became alarmed and brought so 
much pressure to bear on the City Authorities 
that we were declared a 'public nuisance' and 
ordered to leave." 

This pronounced opposition only showed the 
women the success of their venture and encour- 
aged them to go on. Seeing the success of the 
enterprise a public spirited citizen offered the 
use of a splendid lot well located, and within 
a day or two the market was moved to this 
new location. As the City could not be induced 
to give money for a shed, a patriotic and pub- 
lic spirited woman came to the rescue and pro- 
vided funds, and a shed 100 feet long* was 
hastily built. After the first day this shed had 
to be enlarged to 150 feet in ^length, and from 
that time until after Thanksgiving day about 
forty farmers were represented three times a 
week. The hours were from 5 :30 to 9 :30 A. M. 
When cold weather forced the farmers and 
their patrons indoors a garage was offered and 
the market moved into winter quarters. The 

129 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

sales from the market in six weeks amounted 
to over $19,000 and a conservative estimate 
placed the saving to the consumer at more than 
$5,000. A nominal price was charged to the 
farmer for the privilege each day, this amount 
going to cover the slight overhead expense. A 
member of the State Agricultural force was 
furnished and was on hand each day to regu- 
late prices and see that honest baskets were 
sold. The prices were always a little more than 
the farmer would have received from commis- 
sion men and less than the retail price to the 
consumer, so both were pleased. 

Practical Plans for Small Cities. — It is said 
by experts that certain types of population 
lend themselves more readily to the municipal 
market idea than others. Cities having a large 
foreign element and a well developed middle 
class usually give most loyal support to such 
a project. Those who live in cities of from 
25,000 to 50,000 inhabitants should immediately 
consider the question of a municipal market. 
For all smaller places the open market will be 
found advisable for a beginning. It can be 

130 



THE COMMUNITY MARKET 

started with little expense of time and money; 
it can be moved easily, provided the first loca- 
tion is found to be faulty; it can be used as a 
means to determine the degree of support 
which would be given to a larger project by 
producer and consumer. The open markets 
have served to promote interest and enthusiasm 
in a community for this form of more direct 
dealing. With a curb or a vacant lot costing 
nothing as a site, and with a few farmers who 
are willing to sell in this manner, there is every- 
thing to gain and very little risk in making the 
experiment. Having secured the use of a va- 
cant, centrally located lot, those interested 
should immediately set about to enlist the in- 
terest of the producers, either directly or 
through the Farm Bureaus or Agricultural De- 
partment of the State. 

Examples of Successful Markets. — A very 
practical plan was followed with success by the 
women of Worcester, Mass. This plan was 
later expanded and developed. A complete sur- 
vey of all the women's organizations was made 
early in the spring and women were asked to 

131 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

give, as far as they could at that time, an esti- 
mate of the kind and quantity of vegetables 
they would need during the summer and com- 
ing fall. Farmers, through the Agricultural 
agencies, were then urged to produce accord- 
ingly. The community markets at Worcester 
and at Gardner, Mass., are called Farmer's 
Exchanges. Here the farmers bring their prod- 
ucts on two days in the week and the house- 
wives may buy fresh fruits and vegetables at 
nominal prices. A striking example of a suc- 
cessful community market is found in Indiana, 
where it was developed out of classes in demon- 
strating canning and preserving. In Indian- 
apolis between three and four hundred women 
came each week to these classes, and the at- 
tendance throughout the state was correspond- 
ingly large. Mrs. Carl Gr. Fisher, Chairman 
of the Committee on Food Conservation for 
the state, opened a market for the disposal of 
surplus food prepared at these demonstrations. 
Farmers and other producers were invited to 
bring their surplus and the success of the ven- 
ture was amazing. On the first day the entire 

132 



THE COMMUNITY MARKET 

stock on hand was sold for $4.75. Just one 
month and ten days later the sales in one day 
amounted to $960.00, and the activities of the 
enterprise have steadily increased. Rhode Is- 
land tried an interesting experiment at a time 
when the peach crop was unusually heavy and 
farmers could not sell at a profit. The House- 
wives League started a campaign among the 
women to buy peaches direct from the pro- 
ducers, and canning peaches became quite fash- 
ionable. 

While it is not possible to give a working 
plan that is adaptable to all communities, the 
examples given will prove that the community 
market is a practical and a permanent out- 
growth of the work of women during the first 
year of war ; and anyone interested may gather 
from the cases given, or from the sources men- 
tioned, what information they may desire in 
order to begin the experiment in their own com- 
munity. 

An Expert's View. — On the subject of retail 
public markets, Mr. G. V. Branch, Investigator 

133 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

in City Marketing, Office of Markets and Rural 
Organization, says : 

''There are some very difficult problems to 
work out in the successful establishment of 
even such an old-fashioned and apparently sim- 
ple institution as a public market. Although 
a century ago the task was simple, the present 
complexity of the marketing system and the 
extraordinary demands in the way of service 
which are evidenced on all sides, have greatly 
increased the difficulty of suiting an old-time 
project of this kind to more modem life. The 
attempt is met with disappointing results in a 
great many cases, due, however, to no fault of 
the principle itself. Public retail markets — old, 
dilapidated, mismanaged, and filthy — are nu- 
merous. Well equipped, sanitary markets, of 
modem construction, efficiently conducted, are 
scarce. Being usually left to run themselves 
they have done so, quite naturally selecting the 
path of least resistance, which, unfortunately, 
is down grade. Given a fair start and contin- 
ued good business management, a municipal 
retail public market should be a success in any 
average city that is large enough to support 
such a project. 

134 



THE COMMUNITY MARKET 

'* There are many who condemn a market 
unless, from the beginning, it affords lower 
prices. While this is a result that can reason- 
ably be expected in well-directed institutions, 
nevertheless, plenty of time must be given for 
the balancing of the many factors that enter in- 
to price establishment. When a market is once 
firmly on its feet it would seem that a city could 
legitimately ask from it the following service: 
it should give to patrons who will pay cash for 
their purchases and carry them home a dollar's 
worth of actual products for a dollar. In other 
words, when a buyer does not demand or use 
credit and delivery service he should not be 
charged for it. Municipal markets should also 
reflect to the consumer the saving which is made 
possible to the dealer through low rent for his 
stall and equipment, as well as any other reduc- 
tions in overhead expense. Patrons should be 
able to find at a market a larger and fresher 
assortment of food products than the average 
private establishment offers. Due to the possi- 
bility of closer official inspection, the consumer 
has a right to look for increased protection in 
the matters of quality, weight, and measure. 

"When once a city has committed itself to 
a municipal market system, it is immediately 

135 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

confronted with innumerable problems. So lit- 
tle information is available on the subject that 
it usually must become a matter of experimen- 
tation. A serious mistake is often made at this 
point. Instead of having a competent engineer 
or architect carefully study the problem and 
report, it is usually the custom to send a dele- 
gation of city officials on a junketing tour, some 
of whom may incidentally observe the munic- 
ipal markets of the places visited. This would 
not be so detrimental if only the cities inspected 
were possessed of even semimodel marketing 
institutions. More often they are of a mediocre 
type, and are far from fit to serve as patterns 
when the possibilities of a modem municipal 
retail market are considered." 

The '' Farmers' Lvne." — The success of a 
public market often depends upon the size and 
character of its "farmers' line." There seems 
to be an innate desire on the part of housewives 
to buy from the producer and in the open. Con- 
sequently it behooves a city to study the tribu- 
tary rural population. If a good truck growing 
section is already developed within driving dis- 
tance, there should be no trouble about lack of 

136 



THE COMMUNITY MARKET 

supplies for the market, unless the growers 
produce their crops in such large quantities 
tiiat they are forced to sell at wholesale. If 
there is little truck growing in the region, how- 
ever, methods of encouraging the farmers to 
take up that work should be employed. 

Type of Market. — The form of market most 
in favor is a combination of an inclosed build- 
ing, for the sale of meat, fish, butter and other 
products that should be protected, and an open 
space where the market wagons of farmers and 
hucksters can be accommodated. The street 
curb adjacent to the market hall is often used 
for the latter purpose, but as a rule a location 
inside of the property line is better. This open 
section should be equipped with sheds, if possi- 
ble, for the protection of both buyer and seller. 
An enclosed market building with no provision 
for producers' or hucksters' wagons usually 
finds favor only in the larger cities, where open 
space is not available. 

Location of Market. — If there is one consid- 
eration more important than another when the 
possibilities of success of a public market are 

137 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

being weighed, that one is location. Many a 
city has invested a goodly sum in a retail mar- 
ket only to find that they had foredoomed it to 
failure by selecting an out-of-the-way place. In 
judging the accessibility of a market site two 
factors are of prime importance: the numl)er 
of patrons who will walk to the market, and 
the transportation facilities. A market with 
a large tributary population within walking dis- 
tance may save hundreds of dollars a day to 
these buyers in car fares. On the other hand, 
the patron from a distance should be able to 
ride very near the market entrance with as few 
transfers as possible. In selecting a retail- 
market location, the demands of the future 
should always be kept in mind. Provisions for 
expansion of the market plan as the city grows 
have been too often overlooked by municipal- 
ities. 

Construction of Market House. — Other 
things being equal, a market house which has 
good breadth is preferable to a long, narrow 
structure that it is necessary to build when 
erected in a street. The broader market lends 

138 



THE COMMUNITY MARKET 

itself to a more desirable arrangement of stalls 
and general equipment, while the handling of 
products is facilitated. The object which every 
city should strive to attain in the construction 
of a municipal market is the highest degree of 
convenient and sanitary equipment at the min- 
imum of cost. The mission of a market is to 
increase the efficiency and decrease the cost of 
food distribution; consequently, needless ex- 
penditure of money is out of harmony with the 
purpose to be fulfilled. The following points 
should receive special attention and study. All 
counters should be raised far enough from the 
floor to permit of thorough scraping and wash- 
ing underneath. Floors should be of non-ab- 
sorbent material and so laid that they will 
drain thoroughly. Ample arrangements for 
flushing are necessary. Inside walls should be 
of non-absorbent material, such as glass, mar- 
ble, tile, soapstone, or slate. 

Financing the Market. — When funds of any 
considerable amount are needed, the ordinary 
bond issue is used most commonly to provide 
for the establishment of city markets. When 

139 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

curb or other unimproved open markets are 
used, the small expense incurred can be met 
from the funds of some established department 
of the city government. Whatever system of 
operation is decided upon it is very essential 
that in leasing market stalls the city retain 
full control, making the duration of the lease 
short, and tenure subject to full compliance 
with all the rules and regulations of the mar- 
ket. Inasmuch as a public market is a com- 
munity institution, paid for and sustained out 
of public funds, all values which it creates 
should be returned to the municipality, except 
a fair remuneration which must necessarily be 
paid the stall renters in the shape of profits 
for the service which they perform. There 
should be no subletting or transfer of stalls, 
unless unusual conditions seem to justify such 
action. 

While the municipal retail market surely has 
its place in the present system of food distribu- 
tion, its introduction should be accompanied 
with even more mature judgment than would 
attend the establishment of business institu- 

140 



THE COMMUNITY MARKET 

tions by private agencies, for, in committing 
itself to the retail market policy a city is de- 
parting somewhat from the conservative path. 
The public market is not a panacea for the 
weaknesses of the retail system, nor is it advo- 
cated that its use should displace the old estab- 
lished agencies of retail marketing. Rather, 
its service should supplement, cooperate with, 
and to some extent regulate that which they 
give. 



CHAPTER Vin 

THE COMMUNITY KITCHEN 

The Conununity Kitchen, long dreamed of 
and spasmodically experimented with in vari- 
ous localities, began to come into its own in 
the first year of war, and in the second year ten 
kitchens grew where one had grown before. 
These kitchens are of two kinds: those oper- 
ated during the summer months for the canning 
and drying of food for winter use, and those 
operated all the year round for the purpose 
of providing wholesome, well-cooked food at 
nominal prices to school children and to wom- 
en who work and who have no time to devote 
to marketing and cooking. 

Cooperatwe Canning and Drying. — The pub- 
lic cooperative kitchen for canning and drying 
of food came into existence on a large scale as 
a war emergency measure, and in answer to 

142 



THE COMMUNITY KITCHEN 

the Government's insistent demand that no 
food be allowed to waste. Practical encourage- 
ment has been given to the enterprise by the 
Government through the Department of Agri- 
culture, and those interested should write for 
Farmers' Bulletins Nos. 916, 903, and 841. Gov- 
ernment experts have studied various phases 
of the work and are prepared to furnish valu- 
able information and advice to those who seek 
it. 

Municipal or Government owned drying 
plants have been in successful operation in 
European countries for years. Such plants 
provide village communities with a convenient 
and simple method of drying all sorts of prod- 
uce of the home garden and orchard, as well 
as the vegetables and fruits shipped to the 
community, which might be allowed to go to 
waste at the stores and market places. The 
advantage to the busy farmer's wife in the 
country community can not be overestimated. 
Her work is heaviest in the summer when vege- 
tables and fruits must be saved for winter use. 
The establishment of a coiomunity drying plant 

143 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

at a school, country church, or centrally located 
farm home would offer a great relief from her 
heavy kitchen duties. The housewife could 
clean and slice at least a portion of the fruits 
and vegetables she desires to conserve, and 
take or send these to the community drying 
plant, calling for the dried product later. 

Municipalities might well establish plants 
from municipal funds, the work being super- 
vised by the city council or other town author- 
ity. If the plant is not a municipal plant it 
is best to place it under the guidance of some 
association already in existence, or a special 
community club organized for the purpose. In 
one community where a drying plant was es- 
tabhshed a special community club of approxi- 
mately sixty families was organized, primarily 
to look after the operation of the drying plant. 
The officers, consisting of president, vice presi- 
dent, secretary and treasurer, constitute the 
executive committee, and are entrusted with 
power to act. A simple form of constitution 
and by-laws was adopted at the first meeting, 
and meetings are held monthly or oftener when 

144 



THE COMMUNITY KITCHEN 

necessary, usually at the drying plant, which, 
in this community, is in a room of a church 
building. 

Employ a Caretaker. — Whether the plant is 
operated by a municipality or by a community 
club, it is necessary to have a caretaker who 
will be at the plant during certain hours of the 
day to receive and deliver fruit and vegetables, 
to keep the plant in proper condition, and to 
keep the fan and motor running. Usually it is 
best to have the plant open to the public from 
two to four hours a day, say, from 10 to 12 
o'clock in the mornings and from 4 to 6 o'clock 
in the afternoons. The caretaker should live 
near the plant. In case a community plant is 
established in a country district it would be 
well to have the plant located at the home of 
the caretaker. 

The caretakers may be paid by the hour for 
their services, and the money may be obtained 
by making a charge of from two to five cents 
a tray for the privilege of drying. Unless the 
motor power is supplied by the municipality, 
club, or some public-spirited individual, it is 

145 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

necessary to make this charge sufficiently large 
to cover cost of operating the motor. 

Cost of Equipment. — The problem in most 
communities is to start work without an outlay 
of $1,000 or more that is necessary when a 
large, standard drying machine is used. Many 
plants are in operation on a much more eco- 
nomical basis. Such plants may easily be con- 
structed from material obtainable in any com- 
munity, at a cost of approximately $250. If 
certain of the material is furnished by those 
who happen to have it on hand, this cost is 
reduced. A simple long cabinet is constructed, 
ordinary flooring being used for the bottom and 
either flooring or wall boards for the sides 
and top. For convenience the openings are 
placed at the top of the cabinet. The suction 
holds the lids firmly in place. In practice it 
has been found unnecessary to use lid fasteners. 
Such a dryer could easily be built to hold one 
hundred trays, each of the five compartments 
containing twenty trays arranged in tiers of 
ten. 

Material Required. — Such a plant was con- 
146 



THE COMMUNITY KITCHEN 

structed at Lincoln, Nebraska, where it was 
operated with great success. A bill of material 
required is as follows: 

2 pieces— 2" by 4" by 12' long; 7 pieces—l" 
by 6" M. F. by 18' long; 2 pieces— 1" by 4" by 
16' long; 4 pieces— 1" by 4" by 18' long; 1 
piece— 1" by 4" by 12' long; 1 piece— 1" by 3" 
by 16' long; 1 piece— 1" by 2" by 16' long; 1 
piece — 1" by 2" by 14' long; 4 pieces — 1" by 
li/o" by 18' long; 2 pieces— 1/2" by 1" by 10' 
long; 2 pieces — 1/2" by 1" by 14' long; 2 pieces 
— 1^" by 1" by 18' long; 1 piece— 3^" by Q. R 
by 18' long; 1 piece wall board— 48" by 49'; 
wire screen, 24" by 40" for intake end. 

This is bill for cabinet without fan. 

Trays for Drying. — The tray 18 inches by 36 
inches has been found to be admirably adapted 
to community work. It holds about the quan- 
tity of material of one kind ordinarily brought 
by the family for drying. It is light and easily 
handled, the support across the top serving as 
a convenient means of lifting. These trays 
should be made of very light material, with 
wire-screen bottoms and wire screen at one 

147 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

end, the other end being left open. The 
screened end prevents light material from be- 
ing drawn through, while the open end permits 
free access of air and ease in emptying trays. 
The screened end should always be turned 
toward the fan when suction is used. This 
same type of tray is admirably adapted to the 
electric-fan method of home drying by stacking 
these trays one on the other and placing the 
fan at the open end of the trays. Following 
is a bill of material for making 100 trays: 50 
pieces— 1/2" by 2" by 12' long; 38 pieces— 1/2" 
by 11/2 '' by 12' long; 50 yards wire screen, 26 
inches wide. The wire-screen trays should be 
paraffined to prevent the sliced fruits and vege- 
tables from sticking. This can be done easily 
by warming the wire and applying melted par- 
affin with a brush. If any of the paraffin fills 
the meshes they can be opened by holding over 
a stove until paraffin melts and distributes it- 
self over the wire. The paraffin prevents all 
possibility of discoloration of fruits and vege- 
tables by coming in contact with the wires. 
The Fern. — Any type of fan which moves a 
148 



THE COMMUNITY KITCHEN 

suflScient quantity of air can be used. Usually 
an old ensilage cutter blower fan or a separa- 
tor fan used on a blower thrashing machine 
can be found in the community and adapted to 
the exhaust end of the cabinet. Suitable fans 
may be purchased from any of the fan manu- 
facturing companies at from $25 to $50. The 
most important point to watch in the construc- 
tion of a plant of this type is the fan. It 
should be simple in construction, easy of opera- 
tion, and, above all things, large enough to 
move great quantities of air. When 100 trays 
are filled with fruits and vegetables it is nec- 
essary to move the air rapidly to prevent sour- 
ing and molding. The main point to keep in 
mind in the selection of a fan is to get one that 
will move a suflScient quantity of air. 

The Motor. — The fan may be operated by an 
electric motor of from 2 to 5 horse-power or 
by a gasoline engine of similar power. With 
an electric motor the only attention needed in 
operating is oiling the fan and occasionally the 
motor. A gasoline motor will require more 
attention in the way of oil and fuel supply, but 

149 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

even this is simple to operate and understood 
in every community. 

Use of Heat in Drying. — Experience has 
taught that a better colored and better flavored 
product is obtained if no artificial heat is ap- 
plied. Even in arid countries, however, and 
always in humid countries, it is best to have 
equipment for heating. This will be needed 
when the air contains much moisture, as during 
rainy weather. Heating the air in the room 
in which the drying is done will lower its 
humidity and facilitate the drying. If the tem- 
perature of the air is raised above 120 degrees 
Fahrenheit, however, some of the dried prod- 
ucts may be discolored or the natural flavors 
may be changed. The simplest method of rais- 
ing the temperature of the air is by having 
the intake end of the drier in a room in which 
there is a stove. The stove should be within a 
few feet of the intake end. Caution should be 
observed to avoid fire in view of the strong 
draft flowing from the hot stove to the inflam- 
mable drier. 

A Model Club. — One of the most successful 
150 



THE COMMUNITY KITCHEN 

of the canning and drying clubs in America is 
that inaugurated and operated by twelve girls 
of Harvard, Massachusetts, and the plan fol- 
lowed is worthy of study. Amateur work is 
often excellent, but there is always the element 
of chance in it, because the knowledge of the 
fundamental principles is apt to be superficial, 
and so the Harvard girls decided to begin their 
work by taking a thorough training that would 
be a solid groundwork for whatever branch 
they might choose to specialize in later. A 
fund was subscribed and a paid demonstrator 
engaged to instruct the class every Saturday 
during the spring. Upon hearing of the plans 
the Worcester County Farm Bureau showed 
its interest by arranging for its Junior Club 
Supervisor to visit the demonstration room 
every other week and pass judgment on the 
work. 

There was no entrance fee, no club dues to 
pay, no charge for instruction, and no expense 
for the girls of any kind. Only one thing was 
earnestly asked for and expected of them — that 
they would work seriously and with patriotic 

151 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

enthusiasm, always keeping before them the 
desire to give their best efforts in this work 
for their country. 

Canning Outfit. — The canning outfit con- 
sisted of a home canner, costing $50.27; a 
water-seal canner that held ten jars satisfac- 
torily, costing $9 ; and a pressure cooker, hold- 
ing four one-quart jars, three two-quart jars, 
or six pint jars, and costing $20. All of these 
canners are said to be excellent, but each has 
its especial advantage. For instance, things 
that need long cooking can be done in less time 
in the pressure cooker, and for canning meats 
it is unsurpassed. For commercial purposes 
where attractive appearance is essential, the 
water-seal canner will be found especially satis- 
factory. The home canner, while excellent in 
every respect, has the advantage of being large 
enough to turn out the greater number of jars 
at one time. ''We used glass jars entirely for 
our canned products," said the director of this 
club, ''and nearly everything was done by the 
cold-pack method. Not one of our jars spoiled. 
But the rubber rings should be tested as to 

152 



THE COMMUNITY KITCHEN 

whether they can stand sterilizing without 
softening, and perfect cleanliness is imperative. 
Over one thousand jars of canned food were 
put up by the club and over one thousand jars 
were put up by the girls in their homes." 

Evaporating Outfit. — The evaporating outfit 
used with success by this club consisted of two 
evaporators, which could be attached to a stove 
flue inside, or used outside, capacity ten bush- 
els; and a cook-stove drier, costing $6 which 
has eight galvanized wire-cloth trays and which 
can be set on any ordinary cooking-stove or 
on an oil stove. A bushel can be evaporated 
at one time in this drier. The club also had 
four apple paring machines and two vegetable 
slicers. By having such conveniences as these 
a great deal was accomplished in a short time. 
Any child can prepare a large crate of apples 
in an astonishingly short time with these ma- 
chines. 

The aim of the club was to conserve the food 
that contained the most nutrition, and about 
136 pounds of sweet com was evaporated. One 
pound of evaporated com just fills a quart box 

153 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

and equals half a bushel, or three and one-half 
dozen ears. It is said that when the com is 
brought fresh from the field and evaporated 
immediately the quality is exceptionally good. 
"We were able to do this with practically all 
of our food," said the director of the club, 
"and this proved to be one of the great factors 
in the successful results we had." 

Methods of Conserving Food.— The two 
methods of conserving food — canning and dry- 
ing — ^fiU different needs, and one can not take 
the place of the other. Canned goods are con- 
venient for immediate use. In the army, for 
instance, where weight and bulk count so much 
in transportation, evaporated goods are espe- 
cially valuable. The high cost of tin, glass, 
and sugar makes canning a luxury for many, 
while the only expense attached to evaporating 
is in the cost of the evaporator and the fuel to 
heat it, which amounts to little. 

Business Basis Advisable. — Everywhere the 
opinion is expressed that such enterprises 
should be placed on a business basis from the 
beginning. A private enterprise can never ac- 

154 



THE COMMUNITY KITCHEN 

complish the far reaching results that are pos- 
sible when the municipality is responsible. In 
order that such clubs may be of permanent 
value they should become town activities and 
not be dependent on any private individual. 
The members of the club should be given thor- 
ough instruction without cost to them. By the 
end of the first season the work should have 
demonstrated its worthiness to live and the 
municipality should see that it is placed under 
the supervision of the Farm Bureau or some 
equally established agency so that it may be- 
come a permanent and self-supporting activity. 
In many places the work has been started on 
funds raised by benefit entertainments, private 
theatricals, tableaux, motion pictures, etc. 
After equipment has been provided for, a sys- 
tematic campaign is necessary to get the need- 
ed supply of fresh fruits and vegetables. 

Ideal Location Is School. — ^It goes without 
saying that the school is the ideal place for the 
kitchen, especially if it is a modem school, fitted 
with ranges, etc. The assistance of the home 
economics teacher is usually easy to secure, 

155 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

and if possible it is better to pay the demon- 
strator from the beginning. In Fairfield Coun- 
ty, Connecticut, the women worked an inter- 
esting plan for financing their work. They got 
twenty banks to cooperate by loaning money 
on ''character notes." In order to stimulate 
an interest and instruct the women, they is- 
sued two bulletins, one on the cold pack method 
of canning and one on drying and evaporating. 
These women sold at cost to the women of the 
community between 400,000 and 500,000 glass 
jars and 600,000 rubber rings. The organiza- 
tion manufactured its own canning outfits, us- 
ing the style of container recommended by the 
State Agricultural College. 

Some Practical Suggestions. — In taking up 
the work of community canning and drying, 
follow one set of instructions, otherwise it is 
easy to make fatal mistakes. Begin by learn- 
ing the conservation of the simple, inexpensive 
products of the garden and orchard that would 
otherwise go to waste. Do not attempt to can 
imported products; to teach the canning of 
pineapple and bananas in the Northern and 

156 



THE COMMUNITY KITCHEN 

Western states and neglect the canning of 
beans, peas, and tomatoes is a serious mistake. 
Become familiar with the requirements of the 
Federal Food and Drugs Act of June 30, 1906, 
as amended, especially the requirements in re- 
gard to the statement of net weight or measure, 
and the state laws governing grade, weight, 
labels, and trade marks of all canned goods. 
Canned goods prepared for sale within a state 
are governed by state regulations; canned 
goods prepared for inter-state shipment come 
under the requirements of the Federal Food 
and Drugs Act, as well as state regulations. 
The Department of Agriculture recognizes two 
types of canning demonstrations — one for club 
members and one for training of teachers and 
leaders. 

Expert Advice Available. — The United 
States Department of Agriculture at Washing- 
ton, the National Food Administration at 
Washington, and every State Agricultural Col- 
lege has much valuable information, and no 
group of persons should undertake a commu- 
nity canning and drying enterprise until advice 

157 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

has been obtained from such recognized author- 
ities. 

Y ear-Round Gomm>umty Kitchens. — The per- 
manent, all-the-year-round community kitchen 
can hardly be said to be a widely demonstrated 
success, although the necessity of war forced 
many intensive experiments on a rather ambi- 
tious scale, and many of these kitchens are 
operating with pronounced success. Perhaps 
the most successful of these ''neighborhood 
kitchens" are those conducted in New York 
City by the Home Economics Department of 
the National League for Woman's Service. The 
first in the chain of community kitchens started 
in 1917 by this organization was opened at No. 
409 East 50th Street and volunteers cheerfully 
cooked for the women with household cares 
who worked in the shops, factories or stores. 
The day this kitchen opened more than fifty 
women workers of the neighborhood stopped 
in the morning on their way to work and left 
their pails which they called for at noon. This 
number rapidly increased and soon there came 
an insistent demand for lunches for the school 

158 



THE COMMUNITY KITCHEN 

children. Arrangements were made to furnish 
thes2 lunches for five cents each, with one cent 
extra for a cup of cocoa, and through a fund 
started for the purpose free lunches are given; 
to children who can not afford to pay. To avoid 
humiliation or embarrassment, lunch cards are 
issued to the children through their school 
principals. The first day these lunches were 
served thirty children enjoyed the privilege 
and the second day the number had jumped 
to more than one hundred. 

Other community kitchens were opened later 
in answer to definite requests at a time when 
the question of coal in New York was an ex- 
tremely vital one. Many women reported that 
their children were suffering because they could 
not get coal to cook with. It is estimated that 
to open a community kitchen in a city, not less 
than $500 working capital will be required al- 
though, with good management, the kitchen 
should soon be placed on a self-supporting 
basis. Kitchens should be kept open every day 
from 11 A. M. to 6 P. M. so that dinner as well 
as lunch may be secured. An average of one 

159 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

hundred a day are served in the New York 
kitchens. Among the things served are maca- 
roni, beef loaf, soup, stew, and rice muffins with 
prunes, or stewed fruit. The only paid worker 
attached to the kitchen is the cook who receives 
$12 a week, though Mrs. Guy Tolman, who was 
largely responsible for the success of this chain 
of kitchens in New York, advises that in order 
to get the best results, more paid help should 
be employed. 



CHAPTER IX 

ORGANIZATION OF THE ETJRAL COMMUNITY* 

(Plan Suggested by the United States Depart- 
ment of Agriculture.) 

In the New World, particularly in New Eng- 
land, the methods of founding settlements gen- 
erally promoted an organized rural life. Some- 
times a minister of a church gathered a con- 
gregation about him, led them out into the 
wilderness, and planted them on the soil with 
the church as the center of community life. 
Even where this particular type of ''swarm- 
ing" was not followed, the grant of land was 
commonly made, not directly to an individual, 
but to a town or township, and the individual 
in turn got his grant from the town or town- 

^ Adapted from bulletins of the Department of Agricul- 
ture prepared by T. N. Carver, Director Rural Organiza- 
tion Service. 

161 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

ship. The management of the common lands 
was a perennial problem calling for the effec- 
tive organization of all the citizens of the town- 
ship. The townships became, therefore, the 
units of local government. Being a small and 
effective unit, and having certain definite prob- 
lems of an economic nature forced upon it, the 
township easily undertook other tasks of a vol- 
untary nature, such as drainage, operations, 
the branding of livestock, the appointment of 
herdsmen to guard all the cattle of the town, 
the fencing of common lands, the construction 
of roads, etc. 

Not only in New England, but everywhere 
on the frontier, there were common overwhelm- 
ing needs, such as common defense, clearing of 
the forest, the erection of buildings, and other 
tasks demanding the united strength of the 
whole community, which forced the people into 
a kind of cooperation. After the passing of 
the frontier days there remained such common 
interests as the local school, the care of roads, 
the maintenance of the cemetery, to bring the 
people together around a common interest and 

162 



ORGANIZATION OF RURAL COMMUNITY 

give the neighborhood at least the germ of an 
organization. 

Under the public-land policy of the Federal 
Government, however, particularly under the 
preemption and homestead laws, an extremely 
individualistic method of settlement was pro- 
moted. While this policy doubtless served im- 
portant public purposes, it tended to promote 
disorganization rather than organization. Late- 
ly the tendency has been to take the roads and 
schools out of the hands of the local units and 
put them directly under county and state ad- 
ministration. This change probably insures a 
higher administrative efficiency, but it undoubt- 
edly tends to remove the last vestiges of the old 
basis of rural organization. It is doubtless to 
be desired that this centralizing process should 
go on until the entire school system of a state 
is administered as a unit and every country 
child is provided with as good a school as any 
city child. At the same time it will be neces- 
sary to find a new basis of organization to take 
the place of the old bases which have been 
swept away. 

163 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

Efforts at Reorganization. — Beginning witli 
the granger movement of the late sixties and 
the early seventies of the last century, the coun- 
try has witnessed a series of movements, some 
ephemeral and some lasting, looking toward 
a reorganization of rural interests, until we 
now have the National Grange, which is the 
dominant agricultural organization in the 
northeastern section; the Farmers' Education- 
al and Cooperative Union, which is very strong 
in the South ; the Grieaners, who are particular- 
ly strong in Michigan and parts of adjoining 
states; and the American Society of Equity, 
which is strong in the entire Northwest; be- 
sides many smaller organizations. Experts are 
of the opinion that it is doubtful if any one of 
them has yet demonstrated that it has found 
the key to universal success in this direction. 
There seems to be need, in the interest both of 
these existing organizations and of the multi- 
tudes of farmers not yet affiliated with any or- 
ganization, that a permanent body of some kind 
should begin a comprehensive study of the 
whole problem of organizing rural life for eco- 

164 



ORGANIZATION OF RURAL COMMUNITY 

nomic, sanitary, educational, and social pur- 
poses. Perhaps the present tendency to a more 
general and more closely-knit organization of 
the individual rural communities may be pre- 
paring the ground for a larger and more far 
reaching association in the future. No more 
practical plan exists for the organization of 
rural communities than that suggested by the 
Department of Agriculture through the bul- 
letins prepared by Mr. T. N. Carver, Ad\'iser 
in Agricultural Economics, from which the fol- 
lowing outline and explanations have been pre- 
pared. 

Outline of Plan. — This is not a plan for the 
** uplifting" of the farmers, who are quite ca- 
pable of taking care of themselves, although 
they Lave not yet taken up the work of organ- 
ized self-help as completely as could be desired. 
It is hoped, however, that these suggestions 
may persuade many of them to study the need 
for and the results of organization, and to act 
in accordance with the results of their study. 
No single plan of organization will suit all 
rural communities. There must be a clear and 

165 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

definite need for organization before any or- 
ganization can hope to succeed, and they who 
are on the ground and who know the local con- 
ditions must determine for themselves how far 
this plan fits the case. It is of the utmost im- 
portance that careful study should precede ac- 
tion. Hasty, ill-considered action is likely to 
lead to mistakes and failures. A few bad mis- 
takes and conspicuous failures will discredit 
the whole movement and put it back for a gen- 
eration. 

The plan is similar to that of the chambers 
of commerce in some of our large cities. The 
whole membership of the organization is to be 
divided into committees, each member being 
assigned to one committee. Naturally each one 
should be assigned to that committee whose 
work interests him or her most. There should 
be a central or executive committee composed 
of the president of the organization, its secre- 
tary, its treasurer, and the chairmen of the va- 
rious committees. This central committee 
should direct the general policy of the organ- 
ization, have charge of all property, either 

166 



ORGANIZATION OF RURAL COMMUNITY 

owned or rented, raise all funds needed, control 
them and their expenditure, appoint all paid 
officers, such as secretaries, inspectors, packers, 
business managers, etc., if any are needed, de- 
termine their salaries and conduct all corre- 
spondence with other organizations of a sim- 
ilar character, as well as with business or bank- 
ing houses, railroad companies, manufacturers, 
etc. 

The first thing to decide is what are the prin- 
cipal needs of the community in question, in 
order that the proper committees may be con- 
stituted. 

Advantages of Organization. — There is prob- 
ably not a farming community in the United 
States which does not need some, at least, of 
the things named in the above outline. Yet 
none of these things can be secured by indi- 
vidual farmers working alone. Some form of 
"team work" will be found necessary or ad- 
vantageous in every case. Team work counts 
as much in business competition as in athletic 
contests; but the team work, in either case, 
needs to be wisely directed according to a well- 

167 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

considered plan. After long study of the ques- 
tion Mr. Carver reached the conclusion that the 
ten principal needs for organization in the 
average rural community in the United States 
are as follows ; 



Needs of Eu- 
ral Cominuni- 
tiea which Ee-" 
quire Organi- 
zation. 



1. Business Needs. 



2. Social Needs. 



1. Better farm produc- 

tion. 

2. Better marketing fa- 

cilities. 

3. Better means of se- 

curing farm sup- 
plies. 

4. Better credit facil- 

ities. 

5. Better means of com- 

munication : (a) 
Eoads; (b) Tele- 
phones. 

'1. Better educational 
facilities. 

2. Better sanitation. 

3. Better opportunities 

for recreation. 

4. Beautifieation of the 

country-side. 

5. Better home eeonom- 



There are now more than six and one-half 
million farmers in the United States ; they are 
widely scattered; they have a great diversity 
of interests, many of which are difficult to har- 
monize, and the farmers are by temperament 

168 



ORGANIZATION OF RURAL COMMUNITY 

an independent, individualistic class, and there- 
fore difficult to organize. Thus it is not diffi- 
cult to understand why their progress in or- 
ganization has been slow. 

The work of rural organization has been rec- 
ognized by the Secretary of Agriculture as a 
legitimate part of the work of his department 
and this recognition bids fair to mark a new 
epoch in the history of American Agriculture. 

''The characteristic of an agricultural spe- 
cialty [says Mr. Carver] is that there is no 
organized market for it and it does not regu- 
larly sell at a quotable price. If it did it would 
not be a specialty. The isolated small farmer 
could scarcely make a living by growing this 
kind of a crop unless he were near a large city, 
and even there he would probably have to give 
as much time and thought to the marketing of 
his crop as to the growing of it. If he were 
not thus favorably located he could scarcely 
market his specialty at all unless he were either 
growing it on a very large scale, so that he 
could maintain a selling agency of his own, 
or were cooperating with a group of other 
farmers for the same purpose. If they were 

169 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

thus organized they could make more off some 
of this land which is now being neglected than 
they could possibly make off the virgin lands 
of the far Northwest. But as isolated, unor- 
ganized farmers they can doubtless make more 
off those new lands growing a staple crop which 
almost markets itself. Until we succeed in 
developing an organized rural life — ^until our 
farmers are willing to work together instead of 
working as isolated unorganized units — they 
will continue to neglect such lands as require 
organization for their successful cultivation 
and migrate to new lands which are capable of 
being farmed by the old methods. 

'^A similar problem is met with in the pro- 
motion of irrigation farming. There are only 
a few places where an individual farmer can 
reclaim land and bring it under irrigation. Un- 
til some organization could be formed to handle 
the problem or until the state or federal gov- 
ernment took up the matter, individual farmers 
ignored very productive irrigable land in favor 
of inferior land which had the advantage of 
being capable of individual reclamation. Again, 
there are vast areas which require drainage. 
In only a few cases can this drainage be done 
by individual small farmers. 

170 



ORGANIZATION OF RURAL COMMUNITY 

* * Of immediate importance in this connection 
is the problem of the preservation of the small 
farmer who does most of his own work on his 
own farm. His salvation depends upon his 
ability to compete with the large farmer or 
the farming corporation. Two things threaten 
to place him under a handicap and to give the 
large farmer the advantage over him in com- 
petition. If these two things are allowed to 
operate the big farmer will beat him in com- 
petition and force him down to a lower stand- 
ard of living and possibly to extinction. 

*'One thing that would tend in that direc- 
tion is a large supply of cheap labor. The 
small farmer now has the advantage because 
of the diflBculty which the big farmer has 
in getting help. * * * Another thing which 
threatens the prosperity and even the existence 
of the small farmer is the handicap under 
which he finds himself in buying and selling. 
The big farmer who can buy and sell in large 
quantities, and also employ expert talent in 
buying and selling, and in securing credit, has 
an advantage over the small farmer who must 
buy and sell in small quantities and give his 
time and attention mainly to the growing of 
crops rather than to selling them. * * * When 

171 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

it comes to the work of growing farm crops, 
as distinct from selling them and buying raw 
materials, the one-family farm is the most effi- 
cient unit that has yet been found. But the 
big farmer can beat the individual small farmer 
in buying and selling. Therefore, it would seem 
desirable from the standpoint of national effi- 
ciency, to preserve the small farm as the pro- 
ducing unit, but to organize a number of small 
farms into larger units for buying and selling. 
Thus we should have the most efficient units 
both in producing and in buying and selling." 

Committee on Production. — The plan under 
consideration for the organization of a rural 
community begins with the committee on pro- 
duction. The greater part of the actual pro- 
duction can probably be carried on most eco- 
nomically on individual farms of a size which 
can be cultivated mainly by the labor of one 
family. This calls for very little cooperation 
or organization. But the study of the prob- 
lems of production can undoubtedly be carried 
on most effectively in cooperation. If a hun- 
dred men in a community are all studying the 
problem of growing the crops of that com- 

172 



ORGANIZATION OF RURAL COMMUNITY 

munity, but each man studies alone and does 
not exchange ideas with his neighbors, each 
man profits only by his own study; but if 
they meet frequently to discuss their com- 
mon problems and to exchange ideas, each 
man profits not only by his own study but 
by that of all his neighbors. Again, much 
of the work of organized marketing must 
begin before there is anything to sell. It must 
begin with production. Successful marketing 
consists, first, in finding out just what the con- 
sumers want and how they want it packed and 
delivered. To get the whole community to grow 
a uniform product such as the consumers de- 
mand requires organization of the community 
to standardize its production. Again, to stimu- 
late rivalry in improving the products of the 
community, both as to quality and to quantity, 
requires an organization to recognize and show 
some appreciation of merit. 

The problem of marketing farm produce is 
the one which is now attracting much public at- 
tention and calling for organization. The 
problem of economic and eflScient marketing — 

173 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

that is, of securing for the producer the largest 
possible proportion of the price paid by the 
consumer — is largely a problem of selling by 
grade rather than by inspection. So long as 
the farmer lived within hauling distance of the 
consumer, so long as he could haul his produce 
to town and show it, this method was satis- 
factory. But when the producer lives at a great 
distance from the consumer this method be- 
comes expensive. Wherever there is a highly 
efficient system of selling anything it will be 
found that there has been developed a system 
of grading and standardization; that is, the 
goods are inspected only once and are graded. 
Thereafter they are bought and sold by grade 
with no further inspection. But this can not 
be done without organization. The products of 
a multitude of small farmers can be made uni- 
form as to grading and packing by an organ- 
ization and by no other means whatsoever. 

Committee on Marketing, — The marketing of 
farm products must begin, as has been stated, 
with the production of things that are market- 
able. Four accomplishments must precede the 

174 



ORGANIZATION OF RURAL COMMUNITY 

actual selling of a product if the best results 
are to be secured, and each of these accom- 
plishments calls for organization. They are : 

(1) The improvement of the product. This 
ought to be one of the first results of coopera- 
tion. 

(2) The standardization of the product 
through organized production and marketing. 

(3) Branding. An excellent product, graded 
and standardized, must then be so branded or 
trademarked as to enable the consumer to 
identify it or recognize it when he sees it. That 
is really all there is to the stamp on the coin. 
It adds nothing to the intrinsic value of the 
metal, but it makes it circulate. 

(4) Education of the consumer. The con- 
sumer must be educated as to the meaning of 
a stamp or trademark on goods which are ex- 
cellent in themselves and uniform in quality. 
This may call for some form of advertising 
which can be financed effectively only by an or- 
ganization. 

Committee on Securing Farm Supplies. — - 
There are three methods of purchasing farm 

175 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

supplies cooperatively. The simplest method 
is that of a joint order, where a group of farm- 
ers combine their orders so as to get a given 
article in large quantities — say in carload lots. 
The second method is the same except that it 
involves the use of a warehouse which is owned 
or rented cooperatively. The third method is 
to run a cooperative store, which performs for 
the members of the organization all the serv- 
ices ordinarily performed by a privately owned 
store. A group of farmers who have not had 
commercial experience will usually find it wise 
to begin with the first and simplest of these 
methods rather than with the second or third. 
The third, in fact, is only to be undertaken after 
the most careful consideration on the basis of 
actual experience. 

Committee on Farm Fimance and Accownts. — 
The promotion of farm accounting and the 
study of farm accounts in order to find out what 
farm enterprises can safely be financed is the 
first duty of this committee. The next is to find 
out how these enterprises can be financed on 
the most favorable terms. These problems in- 

176 



ORGANIZATION OF SURAL COMMUNITY 

volve many complications which, at best, could 
only be dealt with superficially in a book of 
this kind and those interested should make a 
comprehensive study of the subject. Probably 
no form of cooperation has been so successful 
for so long in this country as that which is 
known as mutual insurance. Farmers' mutual 
insurance companies are spread over the en- 
tire country; but they are especially numerous 
in the states of New York, Pennsylvania, Michi- 
gan, Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa and Min- 
nesota. They are too familiar to call for fur- 
ther mention here. They furnish insurance at 
cost, they are cooperative and they serve as 
examples of what farmers may gain by work- 
ing together for their mutual interests. 

Committee on Communication and Transpor- 
tation. — There is a special need that country 
people have the best possible means of over- 
coming distances which separate them from 
one another — distances measured in miles 
rather than in hundreds of miles. As the char- 
acteristic evils of urban life grow out of con- 
gestion, so do the characteristic evils of rural 

177 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

life grow out of isolation. Except for a few 
rare souls isolation means stagnation. It is 
clear that any farmers' organization wMcli 
aims to improve the economic and social well- 
being of its community must give a good deal 
of attention to the subject of local communi- 
cation and transportation. In this as in all 
other rural-organization work the key-note 
should be organized self-help. Give the neigh- 
borhood easy means of neighborly communica- 
tion and the neighborly spirit will in turn be de- 
veloped among all normal and right-minded 
people. 

Social Interests. — The preceding paragraphs 
relate to the business interests of rural com- 
munities, and all rural improvement must be 
built on a solid business foundation. But it is 
important to consider also what is to be done 
with the prosperity of a community when its 
business interests are well organized. It is a 
mistake to suppose that the one thing needed 
to improve country life is to increase the farm- 
ers ' income. The wealthy farmer is even more 
inclined to move to town than the unprosper- 

178 



ORGANIZATION OF RURAL COMMUNITY 

ous farmer. He is not likely to remain in the 
country if the town provides and the country 
lacks everything he wants and feels that he can 
afford. Town schools are thought to be bet- 
ter, as a rule, than country schools, and so 
long as people believe this, whether it is true 
or not, people who appreciate education and 
who can afford it will move cityward. Then, 
better sanitary conditions are usually found in 
the city. With aU the natural advantages the 
country should be healthier than the city and 
if it is not so it means that country people are 
negligent, and that they have not taken hold of 
the problem with the same vigor as have the 
city people. The city also affords better op- 
portunities for recreation, although in this re- 
spect also the country has the natural advan- 
tage. And another reason why country people 
who can afford it move to the city is the lack 
of household conveniences that are found in 
the country. All of these things are possible in 
the country as well as in the city, but they are 
far less common, and the chief reason for this 
is the lack of community action. It is within 

179 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

the power of any rural coimniinity to correct 
these conditions. It is simply a matter of work- 
ing together. There are no fundamental rea- 
sons why the city should have the advantage 
over the country in matters of education, sani- 
tation, recreation, beautification and household 
conveniences and if the community organizes 
and gives attention to its social problems as 
well as to its business interests conditions wiU 
be rapidly changed. It has been predicted that 
if organization does not take place in rural 
communities, and if the city should for a long 
period of time have the advantage over the 
country in the particulars named, nothing can 
keep enlightened people from going to the 
cities, leaving the country to people who either 
do not care for these things, or who are so 
inefficient as farmers that they can never accu- 
mulate enough to enable them to move to town. 
That is, instead of our progressive, enlighten- 
ed, self-respecting agricultural population, we 
shall drain off all the better elements, leaving 
only a "peasant" population, ignorant, stolid, 
unprogressive, and inefficient. Even the grow- 

180 



ORGANIZATION OF RURAL COMMUNITY 

ing of crops must decline under such a system. 
For all these reasons, it is quite as important 
that our local organization shall give attention 
to the social as to the business interests of 
rural people. 



CHAPTER X 

BOYS* AND GIEI^* CTLTJBS 

(Plan in Operation imder the Extension Worh 

of the States Relations Service, U. S. 

Department of Agriculture.) 

The cooperative work that has been done for 
the boys and girls of the country under the 
direction of the States Relations Service of the 
United States Department of Agriculture has 
had a success that has been almost spectacular. 
It would probably be difficult to trace the very 
beginning of the club work among the boys of 
the South, but as early as 1907 in Holmes 
County, Mississippi, some cooperative work 
was done. There have been sporadic and ephe- 
meral organizations of com clubs in various 
parts of the United States, but there seems little 
doubt that the crystalization of the idea as it 
has since developed on so broad a scale was 

182 



BOYS' AND GIRLS' CLUBS 

due to the wisdom and foresight of Dr. Seaman 
A. Knapp, who was Special Agent in charge of 
Farmers ' Cooperative Demonstration work for 
the United States Department of Agriculture. 
Almost from the beginning of the Farmers* Co- 
operative Demonstration work boys have been 
enrolled as demonstrators and have worked 
their plats under instrucfton of the demonstra- 
tors just as the men have done. Dr. Knapp 
realized very early in the work that there should 
be a separate division known as the Boys* 
Demonstration work, and as early as 1905 some 
of the boys had their plats and were demon- 
strating. From the beginning also Dr. Knapp 
saw the necessity for organizing girls' work 
and when a Boys' Corn Club was organized in 
Aiken County, South Carolina, it was decided 
to undertake a Girls' Tomato Club. The club 
started with a membership of 46 under direc- 
tion of Miss Marie S. Cromer. There are now 
more than 1,000 Home Demonstration Agents 
in the South, and reports for 1917 from fifteen 
Southern states give 715 organized counties 
and an enrollment of 61,589 girls as members 

183 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

of the Canning Clubs; 11,717 girls as mem- 
bers of the Poultry Clubs, and 82,227 women as 
members of Home Demonstration Clubs, of 
which there are 3,812. There are more than 
2,995 women enrolled in Poultry work. All 
these enrolled club members have received 
regular instructions from Home Demonstration 
Agents, and in addition to these, large numbers 
of girls and women have received emergency 
instructions and taken up certain phases of the 
regular work — especially production of more 
food, canning, drying and brining of vege- 
tables and fruits, and the making of bread with 
wheat flour substitutes. According to agents* 
reports this vast army of women and girls who 
have received the emergency instructions 
amounts to between 2,000,000 and 3,000,000. 
The value, not only to those directly touched 
but to the whole country, from such splendid 
cooperative work can not be estimated, and it 
is perhaps not going too far to say that no 
cooperative work now being done in America is 
so remarkable as this among the girls. One 
notable feature of the work has been the estab- 

184 



BOYS' AND GIRLS' CLUBS 

lishment of 75 rest rooms, where farm women 
coming to town can go with their children ; and 
in some places conununity kitchens have been 
established in connection with the rest rooms. 
One hundred and three **Egg Circles" and 39 
cooperative breeding associations have been or- 
ganized. And thus through the teaching of one 
thing thoroughly to a small group of girls in 
1910 the work has grown to embrace practically 
every phase of home life, and thereby has be- 
come one of the greatest educational forces in 
the South. 

For convenience of operation the country is 
divided into the South and the North and West, 
but the work is done on practically the same 
basis in the two sections. 

Organizing for Boys' Club Work. — There 
are now 40 different kinds of clubs among the 
boys, averaging nine projects to a state, though 
not more than nine are undertaken in any one 
state. The most popular clubs are Com Clubs, 
Potato Clubs, Garden Clubs, Canning Clubs, 
Sugar Beet Clubs, Poultry Clubs, Pig Clubs 
and Baby Beef Clubs. The first were the Com 

185 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

Clubs, since corn can be produced profitably in 
nearly all sections. The objects of these clubs 
are: (1) to encourage and train boys along 
the lines of the activities of country life; (2) 
to put into practice the facts of scientific agri- 
culture obtained from books, bulletins, etc.; (3) 
to bring the school life of the boy into closer 
relation with his home life ; (4) to assist in the 
development of the spirit of cooperation in the 
family and in the community; (5) to dignify 
and magnify the vocation of the farmer by dem- 
onstrating the splendid returns which may be 
secured from farming when it is properly con- 
ducted; (6) to enlarge the vision of the boy and 
to give him definite purposes at an important 
period in his life; (7) to furnish to the aggres- 
sive progressive rural school teacher an oppor- 
tunity to vitalize the work of the school by cor- 
relating the teaching of agriculture with actual 
practice. 

Corn was selected for the first demonstra- 
tion not only because it may be profitably culti- 
vated in any part of the country, but because 
boys have a common knowledge of it from child- 

186 



BOYS' AND GIRLS' CLUBS 

hood and because com yields more food to the 
acre in most sections of the United States, when 
properly handled, than any other grain crop. 
Cheapness of production is an important item; 
the growing of more and better com in the 
South is necessary for better farm conditions ; 
it forms part of a proper rotation for soil 
building and will furnish feed for a more ex- 
tended livestock industry; it is the foundation 
crop for home use in most of the Southern 
states; and its more extensive growth will en- 
courage diversification. In western Oklahoma 
and Texas, where com is not adapted to the 
climate, boys have been organized in kafir, milo, 
maize, and feterita clubs. One acre is the unit 
for these clubs. 

Cotton is a standard crop in the South and 
in any system of diversified farming must oc- 
cupy an important place. Therefore cotton 
clubs have been organized and one acre is the 
unit of acreage. In 1914 Peanut Clubs were or- 
ganized in Virginia with great success, and Po- 
tato Clubs have organized wherever there has 
been a demand for them. 

187 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

In cooperation with the Bureau of Animal 
Industry there have been organized pig, poul- 
try, and baby beef clubs and in a number of 
states specialists have been placed to cooper- 
ate with the Agricultural agents in the Pig and 
Poultry Club work. 

After enrollment of the club members a meet- 
ing or meetings of the boys interested should 
be held, either at the courthouse or at some cen- 
tral place in the county, for the purpose of in- 
struction and organization. It is estimated 
that a series of group meetings for each county, 
held at three different times of the year, will 
be sufficient to give ample instructions to the 
boys. Such meetings should be held in ample 
time to give instructions regarding the prepa- 
ration of soil, selection of seed, fertilizers to be 
used, methods of planting, cultivating, harvest- 
ing, etc. The best results are generally ob- 
tained when the following plans are followed in 
a county: (1) the local teacher organizes the 
club; and sends the names and addresses of 
the boys to the county agent of the Farmers* 
Cooperative Demonstration Work. If there is 

188 



BOYS' AND GIRLS' CLUBS 

no agent, enrollment should be sent to the 
county superintendent of education; (2) the 
county agent, in cooperation with the county 
superintendent of education, directs the work 
in the county, holds county meetings, formu- 
lates rules, and settles all county contests; he 
receives the names and addresses of the boys 
from the local teachers, makes copy of the same 
for his office, and sends copy of names and ad- 
dresses, arranged alphabetically, to the county 
superintendent of education and to the state 
agent in charge of Boys' Agricultural Clubs. 
When there is no agent in the county the county 
superintendent sends the names of the State 
agent. It is important to classify the club mem- 
bership with reference to the number of activi- 
ties engaged in, as for example, Class A, boys 
engaged in one activity; Class B, those en- 
gaging in two lines of work ; Class C, those fol- 
lowing three lines, and so on. 

How Clubs Are Instructed. — The county dem- 
onstration agent is the instructor of the county 
club on the plats of the members. He should 
assist the boys in every 'way possible. He 

189 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

should be assisted by the county superintend- 
ent of education in the enrollment of members. 
The school officials should assist the boys in se- 
lecting and measuring their land, help them to 
understand bulletins, circular letters, etc., and 
should visit the plats from time to time to en- 
courage them. Parents should assist the boys 
in every legitimate way and encourage them to 
follow instructions closely. 

Prizes and Premiums. — The United States 
Department of Agriculture does not furnish 
any money for prizes and is not offering pre- 
miums. It has been found, however, that much 
interest can be added to the work by securing 
offers of prizes from public-spirited citizens of 
the community or state. The chief prize in each 
state should be a year's expenses in an agricul- 
tural high school or college. The following ad- 
ditional prizes are suggested: trips to exposi- 
tions, state and county fairs; scholarships in 
short courses in agricultural colleges and 
schools; different kinds of farm vehicles and 
instruments; registered pigs; pure-bred chick- 
ens ; fine colts ; registered calves ; bicycles ; shot- 

190 



BOYS' AND GIRLS' CLUBS 

guns; watches; articles of clothing; books on 
agriculture and horticulture; and cash prizes of 
from $2 to $20. 

The Government offers every encouragement 
to these young farmers and circulars of in- 
struction are mailed to all boys enrolled. From 
time to time circular letters calling special at- 
tention to various steps in raising their crops 
are mailed to the boys. The United States De- 
partment of Agriculture and the colleges pub- 
lish annually a large number of bulletins which 
contain most valuable information on many sub- 
jects of interest to farmers, and these furnish 
excellent matter for discussion at club meet- 
ings or schools. The boys are also furnished 
with crop-record blanks, detailing a method of 
keeping account of the expenses of production 
and specifying steps to be taken in growing 
their crops. 

Rules of Award. — Only a few rules are neces- 
sary in awarding the prizes. It is well for the 
boys to elect their own officers, either in clubs 
or in county organizations. The following rules 
should be adopted by the clubs, with such modi- 

191 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

fications to suit local conditions as may be nec- 
essary : 

1. Boys entering clubs and entering contests 
must be between 10 and 18 years of age on 
January 1 of any given year. 

2. No boy should be allowed to contest for a 
prize unless he becomes a member of the club 
and agrees to submit his reports. 

3. Members of the clubs must agree to study 
the instructions of the Farmers' Cooperative 
Demonstration Work. 

4. Each boy must plan his own crop and do 
his own work; if a small boy, from 10 to 14 
years, he may hire help for heavy plowing in 
the preparation of the soil. The hearty co- 
operation of the father of the boy is of great 
value. 

5. Exhibits of 10 ears of corn, accompanied 
by a written report and a written account, show- 
ing the history of the crop, must be made at a 
place designated for the purpose in the county. 
Such exhibits may be held on a given day, 
either at the county fair, or, if no fair is held 
in the county, at the courthouse or some other 
convenient place. 

192 



BOYS' AND GIRLS' CLUBS 

6. The land upon which the boy's crop is 
made must be carefully measured and the com 
weighed in the presence of two disinterested 
witnesses, who shall attest the boy's certificate. 
This certificate must show that the plat con- 
tains 4,840 square yards. The crop must grow 
upon the acre. 

7. The entire crop of com from the acre in 
the husk should be weighed when it is in a dry 
condition. Then weigh out 100 pounds sepa- 
rately. Husk and shell this 100 pounds and 
weigh the shelled corn. Multiply the weight of 
all the corn in the husk by the weight of this 
shelled corn. Point off the two right-hand fig- 
ures and divide by 56. The result will be the 
yield in bushels of shelled corn. In every case 
where there is a prospective yield of 100 bushels 
or more, notice should be sent to the State agent 
in charge of boys' clubs in the State. A mois- 
ture-tight container will be sent for a sample 
of the corn, which will be taken before wit- 
nesses, as directed in the circular which will be 
forwarded to the contestant. This container 
should be sent by mail, under a frank which 
will accompany it, to the Office of Grain Stand- 
ardization, Bureau of Plant Industry, United 
States Department of Agriculture, Washington, 

193 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

D. C, where a moisture test will be made. TMs 
test is made in order to reduce all liigh yields 
to an even standard. The Ofl&ce of Grain Stand- 
ardization allows 14 per cent of moisture in 
No. 1 com. Under this plan the same labora- 
tory will make the tests for all the boys, and 
fair treatment is thus guaranteed. 

8. The club acre must be all in one body. 

9. In awarding prizes the following basis 
should be used in corn, cotton, and peanut 

Per cent 
(a) Greatest yield per acre. .>. . .,.■ 30 
(h) Best exhibit ,. . ., 20 

(c) Best written account, showing 

history of the crop and how 

to select seed .,. . . . .i 20 

(d) Best showing of profit on in- 

vestment based on the com- 
mercial price of crop. ..... 30 

The following basis of award may be used for 

a limited teriiitory where the contests are on 

poor land : -d j 

^ Fer cent 

(a) For percentage of increase. ./ 30 

(b) For profit. .( ....... 30 

(c) For exhibit , 20 

<^) For history. .. , ,. 20 

194 



BOYS' AND GIRLS' CLUBS 

In such cases a disinterested conunittee, or 
a demonstration agent, determines what would 
be the normal yield of the acre when turned 
over to the boy. In order that boys who have 
good land may not be debarred from statewide 
competition an additional 30 points for yield 
may be added to the above. Within the limited 
territory the 30 points for percentage of in- 
crease would obtain, while in the State the 30 
points for yield would be used. 
Basis of award in potato clubs : 

Per cent 

(a) Greatest yield 40 

(h) Best showing of profit on in- 
vestment 30 

(c) Best exhibit .i 15 

(d) Best history on how I made 

my crop of potatoes 15 

An exhibit of com consists of 10 ears; of 
kafir, milo maize, or f eterita, 5 heads ; of cotton, 
2 pounds of seed cotton and 10 open bolls; of 
peanuts, 1 peck of cleaned nuts and 10 vines; 
of potatoes, 1 peck of seed potatoes. 

In estimating the profits, uniform prices 
should be used. For instance, $5 per acre, or 
$1 for one-eighth of an acre, for land rental; 

195 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

10 cents per hour for the work of each boy, and 
5 cents per hour for each horse ; $2 for a two- 
horse load of stable manure, weighing about a 
ton ; $1 for a one-horse load of manure, weigh- 
ing about half a ton; and the market price for 
commercial fertilizer. This plan of cost ac- 
counting has the advantage of great simplicity, 
but other methods may be adopted. 

Badges and Emblems. — ^An emblem or badge 
has been designed for the boys' agricultural 
clubs, consisting of a book for the background, 
with a four-leaf clover and a kernel of com, 
or boll of cotton, or potato, on the book. The 
word "Demonstrator" appears at the top of 
the book and the words "Boys' Corn, Cotton or 
Potato Club," at the bottom. Four "H's" 
appear, one upon each of the leaves of the four- 
leaf clover. The book is intended to emphasize 
the necessity of education and definite knowl- 
edge of farm and home interests for better 
country life. The kernel of corn, or boll of 
cotton or potato, denotes the crop being raised, 
and the clover leaf combined with it is an em- 
blem of the necessity of scientific training, ro- 

196 



BOYS' AND GIRLS' CLUBS 

tation of crops, soil building, and consequent 
larger education. The four ' * H 's " signify the 
training of the head, hands, heart and health, 
which are essential to a well-rounded life. The 
word ''Demonstrator" means that every club 
member is a demonstrator of the better methods 
of modern agriculture. The cost of these 
badges is very small. 

All-star Corn Club.— The All-Star Com Club 
of the United States is made up of boys who 
raise 100 or more bushels of corn on their acres. 
They and the prize winners who have come to 
"Washington in the past, alone, are entitled to 
wear the *' all-star" emblem, and the wearers 
of these emblems receive certificates from the 
extension divisions of the agricultural colleges. 
By arrangements between offices concerned the 
requirements for membership in the All-Star 
Corn Club are uniform throughout the United 
States. A special badge has been designed for 
the members of this club, and special contests 
are arranged for the members of the AU-Star 
Clubs on a larger acreage. 

Fairs cmd Exhibits. — ^Where there is a county 
197 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

fair the boys' exhibits should be made there if 
possible. Where there is no county fair the 
exhibits should be collected at the courthouse 
or some other public place. Exhibits of this 
sort often lead to the establishment of a county 
fair, and they stimulate the work and give 
splendid opportunities for general instruction. 
Although the club exhibit starts with com, its 
development naturally leads to the exhibition 
of other farm and garden products. The object 
of the boys ' demonstration work is the same as 
that among men — ^that is to secure the adoption 
of better methods of farming and greater yields 
at less cost. Many of the boys in the clubs who 
l)egin to study agriculture in this way will con- 
tinue the study in the agricultural colleges; 
others will continue such efforts on their farms, 
and all of them will make more useful and more 
efficient citizens. From the pleasant and profit- 
able experience of managing their small plats 
they will develop into independent, intelligent 
farmers. The country needs these farmers, and 
the wise and judicious producer can enjoy 
health, wealth, and contentment. 

198 



BOYS' AND GIRLS' CLUBS 

The members of the Boys ' Corn Clubs in the 
Southern states have made demonstrations 
beneficial to their communities at a time when 
great damage was being done by the cotton 
boll-weevil. Their object lessons have been 
equally potent during the period of depression 
incident to the war and low-priced cotton. 
Nearly every community in the South has had 
its boy champion, whose influence has spread 
for miles around, and many a manly, ambitious 
boy has formed new purposes and started out 
with a broader vision and brighter purpose be- 
cause of his local success. The object lessons 
furnished by the State prize winners have at- 
tracted the attention not only of the Nation 
but of the whole world. There are several 
thousand boys in the southern states who are 
members of pig clubs, and under the stimulation 
and encouragement of the work they have start- 
ed into profitable business enterprises. The 
work is outlined here because it presents a 
striking example of the results of cooperation. 



CHAPTER XI 

MOTHEE-DATJGHTEE CLUBS, POULTRY CLUBS AND 
HANDICRAFT CLUBS 

{Plan in Operation wider States Relation Serv- 
ice V, 8. Dept. of Agriculture.) 

Mother-Daughter Clubs. — The principal ob- 
jects of the Mother-Daughter Clubs are (1) to 
bring about a closer fellowship between mother 
and daughter in the social and economic activ- 
ities in the home, and (2) to preserve food by 
canning, and thus save waste, reduce living ex- 
pense, and improve the family diet. The bene- 
ficial effects of such work are by no means con- 
fined to the home, but in many cases are felt in 
the social life and activities of the community 
at large. 

The plan for the Mother-Daughter Home 
Canning Club should provide for work cover- 
ing four years, but the work of each year should 

200 



MOTHER-DAUGHTER CLUBS 

include canning as the primary activity of the 
club members. During the first year canning 
should occupy the larger portion of attention 
and include the attendance at demonstrations of 
canning, the study of canning literature with 
home work in canning fruits and vegetables at 
first, followed later by the canning of soups 
and meats. The regular club meetings should 
be held, as well as a club fair and a club 
achievement day, suggestive programs for 
which may be obtained from the Department of 
Agriculture. The work of the second year 
should continue the work of the first year, with 
additional attention given to cooking lessons. 
The work of the third year should continue the 
work of the preceding years, with additional 
lessons on canning, cooking and sewing. The 
work of the four years should be planned to 
cover four definite home-interest subjects, such 
as home canning, cooking, sewing, and care and 
arrangement of the kitchen. 

Membership in a Mother-Daughter Home 
Canning Club should be made by teams, each 
team consisting of a senior and a junior mem- 

201 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

ber, the senior members to be women 18 years of 
age or over and junior members girls from 10 to 
18 years of age. It is expected that members 
will attend the regular meetings of the club, and 
failure to attend meetings without a reasonable 
excuse is usually regarded as a sufiScient cause 
for forfeiting membership in the club. As the 
j)rimary object of the club is the home canning 
of fruits and vegetables the members are ex- 
pected to attend canning demonstrations, and 
to read the canning instructions furnished them 
by the state leader of club work. In order to 
secure successful results in canning and also to 
have a uniform product when it is desired to 
sell canned goods, members should agree to fol- 
low instructions furnished for canning. Since 
the usual basis of award and programs at club 
fairs and festivals require that the exhibit be 
accompanied by a record of the work done and 
a story of the way in which members did the 
work, it is very desirable that members keep ac- 
curate records throughout the season. More- 
over, if members keep a simple system of cost 
accounting as well as canning records they will 

202 



MOTHER-DAUGHTER CLUBS 

probably bave a better appreciation of tbe busi- 
ness management of the home. 

When interest is manifested in the organiza- 
tion of a Mother-Daughter Home Canning Club 
the State leaders in boys' and girls' club work 
and extension workers in home economics 
should be consulted and their cooperation se- 
cured. They should be asked to furnish specific 
outlines for local club work, suggestive pro- 
grams for club meetings, and follow-up instruc- 
tions. The constitutions used in different states 
vary somewhat, but the following form, adapted 
from one used by Mr. Otis E. Hall, State Club 
Leader for Kansas, where the work has been 
extremely successsful, contains the principal 
features needed by the Mother-Daughter Home 
Canning Club : 

Aeticle I 

Na/me 

The name of this organization shall be the 
Mother-Daughter Home Canning Club, 



of County, 



203 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

AnTICLiE II 

Purpose 

The purpose of this organization shall be to 
teach and encourage the home canning of those 
food products which are generally plentiful in 
summer but scarce in winter, and to bring about 
a closer friendship and cooperative spirit in 
rural and village communities. 

Aeticle ni 

Membership 

Seo. 1. Membership in this club shall be 
made by teams. Each team shall consist of a 
senior and a junior member. Senior member- 
ship shall consist of women over 18 years of 
age and junior membership shall consist of 
girls from 10 to 18 years of age. 

Sec. 2. After a club is properly organized, 
additional members shall be admitted only by a 
two-thirds vote of the club. 

Sec. 3. A failure to attend three successive 
meetings without a reasonable excuse shall be 
sufficient cause for the forfeiting of member- 
ship in the club. Also a failure to comply with 

204 



MOTHER-DAUGHTER CLUBS 

the rules and by-laws of the club after due no- 
tice in writing from the secretary shall be 
cause for the forfeiting of membership. 

Article IV 

Organization and Officers 

(No club shall be organized with less than five 
teams.) 

Sec. 1. The officers shall consist of a presi- 
dent, a vice president, a secretary, and a treas- 
urer. The duties of these officers shall be those 
that usually devolve upon such officers in other 
organizations of like character. The president, 
for example, shall be the executive head of the 
club and shall appoint all committees and shall 
be ex officio member of all committees appoint- 
ed. The committees shall consist of (1) a pro- 
gram committee, (2) a social committee, (3) a 
new membership committee, (4) a buying and 
selling conunittee, and (5) a community wel- 
fare committee. 

Sec. 2. The election of officers. The officers 
of this club shall be elected annually, and only 
active members shall be ehgible to hold office, 
and only those members in good standing shall 
be eligible to vote for officers or on other busi- 

205 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

ness propositions. All voting for officers shall 
be by ballot unless otherwise ordered by the 
club. Before any candidate can be declared 
elected she must receive a majority of all votes 
cast. 

Sec. 3, Two of the four officers shall consist 
of junior members and two of senior members ; 
in so far as possible, one-half of the personnel 
of all committees shall be of the junior mem- 
bers. 

Sec. 4. The right to vote shall be given to all 
junior as well as senior members. 

The membership of committees shall also be 
divided as equally as possible between the 
junior and senior members. 

Abticlb V 

Meetings 

Sec. 1. There shall be, so far as practicable, 
a regular meeting of the whole club every two 
weeks or each month, and special meetings shall 
be held subject to the call of the president. The 
program of the regular meetings shall proceed 
as follows: First, regular order of business; 
second, a subject-matter program or an actual 
canning demonstration by someone from the 

206 



MOTHER-DAUGHTER CLUBS 

college or by one or more teams from the club, 
or a practical and helpful discussion on some 
definite phase of the canning problem; and 
third, social session or adjournment. 

Special meetings shall be subject to the call 
of the president, and when a two-thirds ma- 
jority of the membership of the club is present 
business may be transacted the same as at any 
regular meeting. 

Sec. 2. The order of business shall be as fol- 
lows ; 

1. Call to order by the president or vice- 

president. 

2. Reading of minutes of last meeting by 

the secretary. 

3. Reports from standing or special com- 

mittees. 

4. Unfinished business. 

5. New business. 

6. Social program. 

Article VI 

Duties of Club Members 

Every member is to carry out the rules of 
the club, which rules shall be prepared or ap- 

207 



THE LITTLE DEMOOEACY 

proved by the club leader. Each member shall 
also make a final exhibit for the club if the 
making of such exhibit is voted for by a ma- 
jority of the members of the club. 

The following basis of award is frequently 
used as a guide by judges and referees in 
awarding prizes, honors, and determining 
credits for club work done : 

1. Quantity or variety of canned products. 20% 

2. Quality of canned products 20% 

3. Appearance of canned products 20% 

4. Profit on investment 20% 

5. Records or stories of home canning work 20% 

Total score , 100% 

Poultry Clubs. — Of especial interest are the 
Poultry Clubs that are being operated with so 
much success in all parts of the country. The 
object of forming boys' and girls' poultry clubs 
is to give a better knowledge of the value and 
importance of the poultry industry and the 
marketing of a first-class, uniform product, to 
teach better methods of caring for the poultry 
and eggs and to show the increased revenue to 
be derived from well-bred poultry where proper 
methods of management are pursued. 

208 



POULTRY CLUBS 

If you are contemplating the organization of 
a boys* and girls' poultry club in your com- 
munity, write to the state leader in charge of 
the club work at the agricultural college, asking 
for complete directions and cooperation in the 
work. The state leader, an experienced leader 
of boys and girls, will be able to assist you in 
this work. The state college of agriculture will 
supply the printed follow-up instructions, the 
standard requirement for poultry club work 
in the state, enrollment forms, report blanks 
and possibly record books. Communicate also 
with the county club leader or county agent as 
well as county superintendent of schools and 
make inquiry regarding the organization of 
clubs in your county. When you have learned 
the plans of the state and county club leader, 
the county agents and the county superintend- 
ent of schools you will be ready to take up the 
work. 

Get a small group of interested people to- 
gether and discuss with them the plans for club 
work. Secure the services of the state or county 
club leader to explain the value of this work at 

209 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

a general meeting of citizens, including teach- 
ers. The services of the state dub leader should 
be arranged for at least one month in advance 
of the date of the meeting. At the close of the 
meeting request the parents and children in- 
terested in poultry-club work to assemble for a 
few moments to discuss plans for organization 
of a poultry club and securing a local leader for 
the club group. Get the names and addresses 
of boys and girls who desire to enter the club. 
Make a record also of interested adults. 

Call a meeting of the boys and girls interest- 
ed and go over with them in detail the require- 
ments for membership. Give every prospective 
member an opportunity to talk and tell what he 
has now or may have available for the home 
project work. Have each member list things 
required before he may become a member, and 
require that these be secured before Novem- 
ber first. 

About November first call the members to- 
gether and go over with them the requirements 
of membership, accepting as members the ap- 
plicants who have enrolled, signed agreement 

210 



POULTRY CLUBS 

cards, and otherwise met the organization re- 
quirements. Elect officers and place as much 
responsibility on them as possible. The prime 
object of boys' and girls' work is to develop 
local leadership and responsibility through wise 
direction and encouragement. Forward a list 
of officers and members to the state leaders im^ 
mediately upon organization of the club. State 
club leaders may furnish a ** charter" to each 
club. 

The state leader will send by mail to the club 
members and local leader the necessary follow- 
up instructions, printed forms, and report 
blanks. These blanks will be accompanied by 
adequate instructions for use. The secretary 
of the club should be the custodian of perma- 
nent records and should inspect all reports 
made to the state or district leaders. The fol- 
low-up instructions will be seasonable, bring- 
ing to the club members the information they 
will need at once. One piece of follow-up liter- 
ature carefully studied and put into practice 
is much better than information from several 
sources that is conflicting and confusing. Do 

211 



THE LITTLE DEMOOBACY 

not confuse children with literature from sev- 
eral subject-matter specialists, instructors, and 
instructions that do not agree on the details of 
doing poultry-club work. 

The state club leader is in a sense a special- 
ist in extension methods and in the organiza- 
tion of boys and girls into clubs to carry 
on project work. He has the services of 
subject-matter specialists who are trained in 
the poultry work. The poultry specialist whose 
services are available will meet with your 
club and go over the poultry project with 
the members. The specialist devotes all his 
time to instruction and direction of leaders 
and members. He should not be called upon 
to take up problems in organization or to deal 
with methods of general extension work. The 
specialist may also help the local club leader to 
become expert in poultry management. 

Requirements for a complete poultry pro- 
ject are as follows : (1) Local club must be or- 
ganized before November 1. (2) A local leader' 
is required for the group of members. (3); 
Each member must have at least six hens and 

212 



POULTEY CLUBS 

a male bird. (4) Each member must have ade- 
quate housing facilities for poultry. (5) Each 
member must keep an egg record, also all rec- 
ords of cost of feed and receipts from sales. 
(6) Each member must be personally responsi- 
ble for the hatching of at least fifty chicks be- 
fore May 15. (7) Each member must make an 
exhibit of fowls, eggs, and record book or re- 
port. (8) Each member must attend all meet- 
ings of the club. (9) Each member must at- 
tend all field meetings held by the club. (10) 
Each member must prepare a written report 
and story of his work. 

The four-leaf clover emblem, described in the 
previous chapter is the recognized trademark 
of boys' and girls' club work. It has created 
a large and growing fraternity of achievement 
known and recognized throughout the United 
States. For demonstration work each club 
member should have a suitable club uniform 
displaying the club emblem. The States Rela- 
tion Service of the Department of Agriculture 
at Washington or the State Agricultural Col- 
leges will be able to supply bulletins and will 

213 



THE LITTLE DEMOCEACY 

suggest programs for meetings. No meeting 
should be more than one and one-half hours 
long. If meetings are held in the evenings they 
should begin early and adjournment should be 
prompt. Poultry-club members should be given 
a chance to drill in parliamentary practice and 
the proper method of conducting a business ses- 
sion in their club meetings. A few moments' 
time devoted to this at the beginning of each 
session will be found very beneficial. The third 
division of the program at the regular club 
meetings can be devoted entirely to social inter- 
course if desired, with a view to the develop- 
ment of the social and the cooperative strength 
of the club membership. In connection with 
these thirty-minute periods, guessing games, 
poultry play contests, poultry stories and other 
forms of entertainment may be provided. This 
type of program will draw upon the resource' 
fulness and originality of the local leader as 
well as members. Consult with the poultry spe- 
cialist and subject-matter departments of your 
State College of Agriculture with a view to giv- 
ing the kind of a program that will be season- 

214 



HANDICRAFT CLUBS 

able and furnish to the club membership the 
kind of instruction they will need in connection 
with their home project. 

Farm and Home Handicraft Clubs. — The 
purpose of this club project is to encourage 
boys and girls to spend their spare momenta 
during the fall and winter months, or during 
the entire school year in doing constructive 
work and making useful things for the farm 
and the home. Such handicraft work may be 
readily co-related wdth the manual training 
work of the school and with the agriculture and 
home economics club work for the summer va- 
cation. It may be so planned as to extend over 
twelve months, or may be limited to the regu- 
lar nine months' school year. The following 
outline is furnished by the Extension Work De- 
partment of the Department of Agriculture, as 
a guide to the state, district and county leaders 
with a view to helping them to cooperate in- 
telligently in the club work and to encourage 
and promote it : 

1. That the age limits be the same as in other 
clubs, i. e., from 10 to 18 years, inclusive. 

215 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

2. Tliat each club member be required to se- 
lect not fewer than 10 of the industrial units 
and to work upon each of them during the 
school or calendar year. If thought desirable 
by the leader, a club member may specialize in 
one line of work, with a view to acquiring so 
much skill that his product will be salable. In 
such cases he should be required to produce 
twenty samples of his special kind of work. 

3. That all of the work undertaken be ex- 
hibited at some place selected by the state or 
district club leader. The exhibits may be in 
miniature or by photograph or drawing where 
the exhibit space will not permit the showing of 
original pieces. 

4. That club members be required to furnish 
drawings, plans and specifications of all the 
units selected by them whenever this seems 
necessary. 

5. That all members taking up this work be 
required to keep records of observations, costs, 
and receipts, and to furnish reports of the work 
in the form of financial statements and written 
stories on the subject "How I Did My Handi- 
craft Club Work." 

6. That leaders consider seriously the desira- 
bility of marking industrial units A and B — 

216 



HANDICRAFT CLUBS 

A for th« girls* clubs and B for the boys* clubs. 
This may be desirable in some places and not 
in others. Leaders should not incorporate in 
the club program any of the kinds of work 
definitely required in other definitely outlined 
projects and should add to the list any others 
that are especially adapted to their communi- 
ties. 

Basis of Award. — The following basis of 
award is suggested : Per 

cent 

1. Number and character of enterprises undertaken 

and completed 25 

2. Condition of the finished products exhibited 25 

3. Skill, speed and accuracy shown by a demonstra- 

tion in four units 25 

4. Written reports and records of work 25 

Total score 100 

The handicraft units out of which the ten are 
to be selected are as follows : 

1. Eope tying and splicing (10 knots tied and 

mounted). 

2. Making seed testers (box, blotter and rag- 

doll testers). 

3. Making a hencoop and brooder. 

4. Fruit grafting and tree surgery. 

5. Making a flytrap or window screen. 

217 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

6. Making a wood box for kitclieii or sitting 

room. 

7. Makiig a bird bouse and watering trough. 

8. Making a hotbed or cold frame. 

9. Making a stepladder or handy ladder for 

farm and home. 

10. Making 1 dozen vegetable market crates. 

11. Sharpening saw, pair of scissors, carving 

knife. 

12. Making a medicine cabinet. 

13. Making and laying a cement walk or floor. 

14. Making a bookcase or library file. 

15. First aid to farm implements, i. e., re- 

pairing. 

(a) Whippletree. 

(b) Pair of shafts. 

(c) Fork handle. 

(d) Gate. 

16. Drawing plan of 80-acre farmstead. 

17. Forging — two kinds, practical, related to 

farm work. 

18. Welding — two kinds, practical, related to 

farm work. 

19. Horseshoe making. 

20. First aid to household furniture, i. e., re- 

pairing, 
(a) Chair. 

218 



HANDICRAFT CLUBS 

(b) Table. 

(c) Picture frame. 

(d) Door lock or hinge. 

21. Pressing and cleaning men's and women's 

suits. 

22. Papering a room. 

23. Painting, staining, or treating floor. 

24. Making a farm dooryard gate. 

25. Making a homemade fireless cooker, one of 

two methods. 

26. Making a home canner, one of two methods. 

27. Making a kitchen shelf or kitchen work 

chair. 

28. Getting out a set of plans and specifications 

for model farm home. 

29. Giving first aid to school furniture and 

equipment, such as the repair of a seat, 
window, fence, broken gate, blackboard, 
doorstep, or sidewalk. 

30. Repairing the cover or broken back of a 

book. 

31. Metal work for household. 

32. Modeling in clay and plaster. 

33. Leather work; repair of leather goods or 

art work. 

34. Dyeing, stenciling, and block printing cloth. 

35. Pottery for use in the home. 

219 



THE LITTLE DEMOCHACY 

36. Basketry, i. e., making baskets for use in 

gathering and marketing vegetables and 
fruit. 

37. Making a milk stool or bread-cutting board. 

38. Homemade mill for fruit juice and cider. 

39. Hat and coat rack for haU. 

40. Making a table or a workbench. 

41. Knitting or crocheting a rug. 

42. Drafting a pattern for a garment or cutting 

and fitting a garment. 

43. Mending pottery, china, and glass. 

The best time to enroll the club members in 
this particular project is at the opening of the 
school year, in the early fall, and members of 
all other clubs are urged to take up this work 
for the winter months. 

Those interested in taking up this work 
should secure a set of instructions prepared by 
Mr. Otis E. Hall, agent in charge of boys' and 
girls* club work for Kansas, who was assisted 
by Mr. Gr. E. Bray, in charge of the manual 
training shops of the State Agricultural Col- 
lege, at Manhattan, Kansas ; and also the handi- 
craft circulars issued by Mr. C. E. Bishop, of 
the Iowa State College. 

220 



CHAPTER Xn 



COMMUNITY MUSIC 



Long before the Community Center idea had 
crystalized into definite form it began to ex- 
press itself spontaneously in music. This ex- 
pression we find in the old-fashioned "sings" 
in the rural schools ; and later in the great fes- 
tivals and pageants in many of our cities. For 
a number of years Boston has had a depart- 
ment of music in its city government. In New 
York City the idea attained the very flower of 
its development in the Community Chorus 
under the leadership of Arthur Farwell and 
Harry H. Barnhart. In Rochester, Chicago, 
and many other cities public music has been 
recognized as a vital factor in the development 
of a wholesome social life. There are those 
who oppose Community Singing as it affects 
the individual voices — ^the undeveloped and the 
highly trained — ^but there are doubtless none 

221 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

who deny the larger good that must come from 
the harmonies of Community Music. In Cen- 
tral Park, New York City, on one occasion 120,- 
000 people were gathered to sing together. Not 
a shrub was injured, not an article was report- 
ed lost, not a person was ill or injured — ^police- 
men had nothing to do. This was a striking 
example of the unity of effort and singleness 
of mind. One of the leading arguments in fa- 
vor of war is that it makes a people one, that 
it unifies their interests, provides a common 
purpose, and gives opportunity for self-expres- 
sion in common with fellow beings with like im- 
pulses. All this may be said of Community 
Music. ''The singing army is the fighting 
army" came to be a slogan early in the war, 
and in every camp of American soldiers at 
home and abroad singing is encouraged and 
professionally directed. Governor Brumbaugh 
of Pennsylvania issued a proclamation urging 
the organization of marching singing clubs to 
arouse the nation to a higher, truer patriotism. 
** Moving masses of singing souls," he says, 
**will effectively summon all to loyalty and to 

222 



COMMUNITY MUSIC 

sacrifice.** Governor Brumbaugh's proclama- 
tion follows : 

Whereas, When a people is at war it is 
vital that they be united in spirit. There 
can be no severance of purpose. We must 
be spiritually in unison or we cannot na- 
tionally survive. There is no more potent 
power to mold the national will than song. 
Music is the language of the race universal. 
It has a meaning that finds interpretation 
and acceptance in all people. Music is su- 
premely significant in unifying and arous- 
ing the American spirit. The rendering of 
music to our people is not enough. They 
must make music and become themselves 
the voice of America, calling to the world 
for justice, righteousness and victory. 
This soul-call will best universalize itself 
if our people sing and march. The moving 
masses of singing souls will effectively 
summon all to loyalty and to sacrifice ; and, 

Whereas, Mr. John C. Freund and many 
others in this war crisis sense keenly this 
opportunity and have called upon our peo- 
ple to give effective and practical expres- 
sion to the spirit of America in song and 
procession-, 

223 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

"Now, therefore, I, Martin Grove Brum- 
baugh, Governor of the Commonwealth of 
Pennsylvania, do call upon and earnestly 
urge all of our people in all communities 
in this Commonwealth to organize march- 
ing clubs or singers. With flag and band to 
lead, let our children and our men and 
women march the streets of our cities and 
the paths of our people with songs of the 
republic and with stately hymns of reli- 
gious fervor. 

Let all lovers of music meet and plan to 
do this high service. Let all our people 
heartily cooperate. Let our municipal offi- 
cials publicly commend the movement. Let 
our newspapers urge its importance, and 
let Pennsylvania be first and best in giving, 
by marching bands of singers, lofty expres- 
sion of loyalty to God and to country. 

A ''Musical Melting Pot." — Music in the pub- 
lic schools has developed to a remarkable ex- 
tent within the past decade. Out of 1,928 cities 
with a population of 3,000 or over (statistics of 
1917), 1,332 employed a supervisor of music; 
in 1,306 cities between 1,000 and 3,000 in popu- 
lation, 789 employed a supervisor of music. In 

224 



COMMUNITY MUSIC 

the mazes of New York City^s famous Green- 
wich Village there is a ''musical melting pot" 
where children of the old world are being 
Americanized through the subtle agents of 
music study, united understanding, and self-ex- 
pression. American music and American mu- 
sicians have no stauncher friend than Mr. 
John C. Freund to whom is due much of the 
rapidity with which the Community Music Idea 
has developed. In Musical America, of which 
Mr. Freund is editor, there is this mention of 
Community Music in Greenwich Village : 

*'In the crooked streets outside Washington 
Square live a great number of foreigners — Ital- 
ians, Jews, French — the very material of which 
our standing rows are composed. To most of 
these foreigners Greenwich Village Settlement 
House is a haven of comfort, and Mrs. Simkho- 
vich, who directs it, generally grants all the rea- 
sonable desires of the neighborhood. 

''Some seasons ago one little girl, followed 
by nineteen others, stirred with ambition, came 
to Mrs. Simkhovich and asked to be given piano 
lessons. Being a veritable fairy godmother, 
Mrs. Simkhovich transformed two tiny rooms in 

225 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

Greenwich House into mnsio rooms, and there- 
after the twenty enthusiasts received music les- 
sons there. Soon, however, numberless other 
children followed these first, and then it was 
necessary to devote an entire house to the 
music work of the school. It is this school 
which is to preserve in the foreign children 
their musical heritage, and yet make them truly 
American in feeling. 

**Any afternoon after 3 o'clock a visitor to 
Greenwich Music School may hear a veritable 
symphony of sound. From one room can be 
heard the strains of little Angela taking her 
piano lesson, in another room little Jacob is 
trying to tune his violin, and should you peek 
into a third room you would see a dozen earnest 
children learning a children's symphony. 

''The Greenwich School also trains its more 
advanced students to teach. Their oldest 
scholars give lessons to some of the younger 
pupils. These pupil-teachers are never given 
exclusive charge of their pupils, as they only 
teach alternately with the members of the fac- 
ulty. This alternate teaching, however, per- 
mits them to get actual practice in teaching and 
enables them to earn some money at the school. 

'*Nor is the school quiet in the evenings. 
226 



COMMUNITY MUSIC 

Again it is filled with the sound of music, only 
now it is the older people, the parents of the 
children, who are the performers. With char- 
acteristic eagerness and with their tremendous 
love for music, these people, peddlers, tailors, 
flower makers, come and learn to sing the songs 
they have always known by ear. Among them 
are Italians, Jews, Americans, Lithuanians, 
Poles and Germans. Such a conglomeration I 
But this is where the Americanization comes in. 
In their choral work, these people learn to sing 
their favorite melodies. They sing, too, their 
folk-songs in English, and nothing could be 
more conducive to giving intimacy to the work 
than the singing of native songs. The distinct 
lines of demarcation made in everyday life by 
language and racial differences are entirely 
eradicated here. And this means Americaniza- 
tion, for it tends towards the obliteration of 
prejudices and towards mutual understanding. 
Among such foreigners, where the spiritual life 
is so greatly represented by music, such a 
school as the Greenwich School must neces- 
sarily be a great force for good. 

**The school has also set out to satisfy an- 
other want — to permit the entire neighborhood 
the luxury which they so much desire of hear- 

227 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

ing good music. At first it was tlie custom to 
bring well-known artists to the school on Sun- 
day nights, and to hear these the entire neigh- 
borhood was invited. But later a series of con- 
certs of the highest worth was planned. As a 
general rule, the majority of people in this 
section would be unable to attend the uptown 
concert. ' ' 

Methods of Organizing. — No lengthy argu- 
ment is needed here to emphasize the value of 
Community Music. What is more important is 
something of the method of organizing and di- 
recting the work. New York is not typical, for 
its problems are particularly individual, but 
the difficulties encountered in establishing such 
a movement in so great and so complex a city 
make of success a real achievement, and entitle 
the city to be called the Capitol of the Com- 
munity Chorus World. Efficient, consecrated, 
far-visioned leaders are essential to success in 
any great movement, but mere human efficiency, 
mere consecration to a single purpose, mere 
vision of future physical possibilities are not 
enough to build upon unless the foundation 

228 



COMMUNITY MUSIC 

rests secure in a wholly spiritual conception 
of the plan. New York was fortunate in its 
Community Music leaders. Mr. John C. Freund, 
editor and publicist, for half a century the 
apostle and the earnest supporter of all that 
is best to the world and music, has stood square- 
ly behind the Community Music movement, both 
personally and through his magazine. Mr. 
Harry Barnhart, the leading conductor of Com- 
munity Chorus in the East if not in America; 
Mr. Arthur Farwell, composer and litterateur, 
President of the New Y'ork Community Chorus 
until the summer of 1917; Mr. W. Kirkpatrick 
Brice, Treasurer and main financial supporter 
of the work since its beginning; and Mr. Claude 
Bragdon, the ** lighting master" who gave the 
best of his creative genius — each has been a 
potent factor in the New York success. But 
while the public was being fired with the genius 
of these men, seeing them and hearing them 
and reading about them, Barnett Braslow, as 
Executive Secretary, made the wheels go 
round — those invisible wheels that must turn 
and turn, and keep on turning, if results are to 

229 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

be obtained — hig wheels and little wheels, 
wheels that nobody sees or kaows or cares 
about. It is doubtful if any of the men whose 
genius has directed the Community Chorus in 
New York City know more about the practical 
working of the plan, the dangers and difficulties 
to overcome, the pitfalls to be avoided, than 
Barnett Braslow. ''A Community Chorus," 
says Mr. Braslow, "in the sense in which it is 
used in the East, particularly in New York City, 
Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, East Orange, New 
Jersey; Providence, Ehode Island; Pittsfield, 
Massachusetts;, Batavia, New York, etc., is a 
chorus open to all who desire to sing for the 
pure joy of singing, regardless of previous mu- 
sical training. No voice test is required, no 
dues are exacted from members, each singer 
contributing voluntarily in proportion to what 
the inspiration from the conductor and the feel- 
ing of association in a good cause is worth to 
him or to her as an individuaL" 

Essentials of Leadership. — Of the qualities 
essential for leadership Mr. Braslow says: 
"The qualities that make for leadership are 

230 



COMMUNITY MUSIC 

bom of infinite experience, the most pointed 
adjectives can scarcely describe them. How 
do we know the leader? Not by what he said, 
but how he said it; not by what he did, but 
how he acted. He touches the common mind 
and it flashes a new glory. His manner reveals a 
definite line of cleavage between current doubts, 
vague apprehensions and positive faith and as- 
surance. He soothes to a wiser conviction. 
Fear has no place in his calculation. There is 
no 'tomorrow' in his vision. His message 
is for all time. The universal energy speaks 
through him. Everything conspires to bring 
him success. He understands his brother man. 
He stirs the latent forces that hunger for self- 
expression. He laughs at obstacles. He cre- 
ates new conditions. Nature aids and abets his 
program. God is his ally. A conductor of a 
chorus must possess leadership qualities, at 
least in part, before he can make good. He 
must recognize success and nothing but suc- 
cess. He must never be discouraged. The mo- 
ment he loses confidence in himself, blames con- 
ditions, shifts responsibilities, relies on mere 

231 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

magnetism, or physical personality to carry him 
forward, he is lost. Consciously or uncon- 
sciously he must reflect a spiritual ideal far 
above and beyond passing conditions. He must 
be a practical idealist. Expertness in musical 
technique alone does not suflfice. A few conduc- 
tors in the Community Chorus movement have 
this rare promise as leaders. The country 
needs them, the world needs them — ^may their 
light ever shine with increasing brightness. 
Harry Bamhart made plain the basic principle 
upon which his choruses were to operate, and 
in his grasp of mass psychology, his under- 
standing of the crowd, he has shown extraordi- 
nary power and vitality. Fifteen years ago he 
told Arthur Farwell that somehow, sometime, 
we would break away from the class conscious- 
ness which obtained with respect to music, 
and he pointed out that the Protestant Refor- 
mation began when Luther introduced his new 
hymns to the people. Mr. Barnhart is today 
the leading conductor of the Community 
Chorus. Because of certain dynamic qualities 
in his character he attracted to the movement 

232 



COMMUNITY MUSIC 

several people of widely different tempera- 
ments, experience and ability, which tempera- 
ment, experience and ability were precisely the 
qualities needed in addition to his own to pro- 
duce the work which made the Community 
Chorus famous." 

Financing the Work. — The financial question 
is a vital one in organizing for Community Mu- 
sic and one that few have solved satisfactorily. 
Mr. John C. Freund carefully analyzed the 
whole situation dealing with this question in an 
article in Musical America, in August, 1917. 
He said: 

**The whole idea of the chorus is that it is 
an absolutely democratic organization, and as 
such it should not depend upon the good will or 
the patronage or the public spirit of anyone, 
or even of a half dozen persons. Here arises 
naturally the question of method. It surely 
should be apparent, considering the splendid 
work the chorus has done, and the interest that 
it has aroused, that there must be in a large city 
like New York, more than enough people who 
gladly contribute to maintain it, and so to place 
it not only upon a solid financial foundation, 

233 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

but to make it as democratic in the manner in 
which it is supported as it is democratic in its 
fundamental idea. For ages music, even more 
than painting or literature, has been the pro- 
tected child of public spirited or socially ambi- 
tious people, who have included emperors, 
kings, princes, and multimillionaires. Today 
the time has come to take music out of the 
hands of the few from under this protection, 
democratize it and give it into the hands of the 
people. But at the same time in doing so it is 
the people who must rise up and contribute to 
its support. 

*'It is our conviction that the utmost public- 
ity should be given to the financial side of the 
problems, and the burden be shared, as it can 
easily be, by a large number of people. This 
could be done without in any way infringing 
upon the original idea, which was to bring 
together people of all classes, the poor as well 
as the rich. We also believe it can be done in 
a manner which will not deter people from com- 
ing to rehearsals, or from taking part in the 
concerts even if they are not able to contribute 
the most modest sum. Appeals should be put 
out, and with adequate publicity we are con- 
vinced that the result will be suflScient to meet 

234 



COMMUNITY MUSIC 

all expenses and will make the organization rest 
on contributions of all those who are interested 
in such work, rather than have it dependent 
upon the public spirit and generosity of one or 
two or three individuals. In a word, if the 
Community Chorus is to mean anything, if it is 
to maintain the idea, and, indeed, the ideal 
which started it, its support is a matter of pub- 
lic concern and not of private enterprise, how- 
ever well meaning and altruistic." 

Eight hundred singers participated in the 
great "Song and Light Festival" in 1916. One 
thousand sang the '* Messiah," and eighteen 
hundred the '* Creation." Seven hundred 
adults and five hundred children sang Gaul's 
"Holy City" at the "Song and Light Festival" 
in 1917. 

The Spiritttal Conception. — As has been fre- 
quently stated in these pages, the most effi- 
cient, the most highly organized human ma- 
chine can not hope to be a vital factor, a living 
force in our national life unless the very ma- 
chine itself has been conceived in a soul-con- 
scious brain and unless it is directed and driven 
to do its mechanical work by a great funda- 

235 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

mental power that is truly and wholly spiritual. 
No man or woman in America has realized 
this more completely than has Kitty Cheatham, 
whose exquisite art has touched the heart of the 
whole world with its message of purity and 
love. From the beginning of the Community 
Music movement Miss Cheatham has been its 
enthusiastic supporter, its staunch friend, and 
always and everywhere she has stood for a 
deeper conception, a truer realization of its 
spiritual import. 

"We have not sung nationally [says Miss 
CheathamJ because the fundamental principle 
of harmony upon which this nation is founded 
— a true democracy — ^has not been expressed in 
the songs that are supposed to represent us na- 
tionally. This divine democracy must reveal 
to every man his immortal birthright of har- 
mony — 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happi- 
ness'. The spiritually awakened American has, 
therefore, conscientiously resisted singing the 
songs which express the discordant mental 
qualities that have produced the world war, and 
which are the antithesis of those which gave 
birth to our nation. Often they have hidden 

236 



COMIVIUNITY IVIUSIC 

themselves under the guise of cheap sentimen- 
tality. 

''What do the words of Stephen Foster's 
songs — and those of his contemporaries — con- 
vey? Death, sorrow, an appeal to the sensuous 
emotions, misery, — all that is holding the world 
in bondage today. 

''The people are weary of these sentiments 
and are longing to find and hold their legiti- 
mate heritage of freedom, joy, happiness — 
which belong to every child of God — and they 
will finally ring it out through song. They do 
not find this immortal inheritance in singing 
of the dying of ' Old Black Joe ' or the burying 
of 'Massa's in the Cold, Cold Ground,' or the 
painful parting from 'Darling Nellie Gray,' or 
the contemplation of 'growing old,' or 'Sil- 
ver Threads Among the Gold. ' We can not in- 
spire reverence in our large foreign-born popu- 
lation, or in our children, by teaching them to 
celebrate national patriotism, at this vital mo- 
ment in the world's history, by singing such 
words as: 

" 'Dar's buckwheat cakes an' Ingen batter 
Makes you fat, or a little fatter,' 

and some of the other verses of 'Dixie.' 

237 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

**A careful investigation of the words of our 
national songs will surprise and, let us hope, 
arouse those who have not given this subject 
thought. 'The Star-Spangled Banner' does not 
represent us either in words or in music. Eng- 
land 's Premier, David Lloyd George, said re- 
cently, that Great Britain's greatest enemy, the 
national evil of drink, was within Great Brit- 
ain. Then is it not entirely illogical and dan- 
gerous (to those who know the law of cause 
and effect), to attempt to unify the Anglo- 
Saxon nations- — a God-made unity which must 
be cemented before this war can cease — ^by 
using as our national anthem, the music of an 
English drinking song, sung to words that were 
inspired by our bitter conflict with our brother, 
Great Britain? The 'bombs bursting in air,' 
'rockets' red glare' and 'foul pollution' of a 
dead past, must cease, at this glorious hour of 
revelation of the 'new created world,' which 
America represents in her spiritual conception, 
birth and development. 

"As a nation we must rise to our God-ap- 
pointed mission of spiritual leadership and to 
a true community spirit, that will express it- 
self in a burst of harmony that will flood the 
universe with light and song. 

238 



COMMUNITY MUSIC 

**We gave birth to the * Light that lighteth 
all the earth,' — democracy. 'Let light reveal 
eternal harmony', should be our keynote and 
the fountain source of our music. 

**We are a childlike nation, whose constitu- 
tional greatness is founded upon its directness 
of purpose and utterance, and our future music 
will emanate from the consciousness which has 
been purified by suffering, caused by the world 
war, and which will express itself in purity of 
conception — in simplicity, sincerity, beauty and 
the rhythm of Spirit. There will be no lack of 
response from the people, when those who have 
the privilege of teaching them, rise to their 
great opportunities. 

* ' During one of my recitals at Carnegie Hall 
I sang a little 'Lullaby' by Augusta E. Stetson, 
and, spontaneously, asked the audience of over 
three thousand people, if they would join me in 
singing it. I then repeated the words of the 
last verse twice, and the response from that 
vast assemblage I can never forget. Four times 
we sang in unity, and each time the tone was 
purer and fuller than before. The true com- 
munity spirit of love was voiced, and the result 
seemed to be the unified outpouring of melody 
from every member of that audience. Such 

239 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

experiences, repeated constantly, would quickly 
usher in 'Peace on earth, good will towards 
men, ' for which all the world is struggling. The 
true allied forces of justice, mercy, truth, ten- 
derness, love, — these quahties that express true 
harmony, would hush the discordant tones of 
rivalry, hatred, despotism, that are manifest- 
ing themselves in this world war. 

''Most of our national songs emphasize dis- 
ruption, schism, or, as in the case of 'Yankee 
Doodle,' — ^inanity, — ^which Webster defines as 
'lack of sense'; which should be destroyed, not 
perpetuated. Such songs do not dignify a 
nation, and the future generation will not be 
equipped for intelligent progress by their use." 



CHAPTER XIII 



COMMUNITY DRAMA 



One of the earliest forms of expression of 
that true neighborliness which will make of the 
world a real democracy was the Community- 
Drama. We find it in the dramatic religion of 
the early Greeks, with the dances, the chants, 
the choral songs, and we find it today in the 
great historical pageants of our cities and our 
villages, and in our training camps in America 
and in Europe. At the close of the great pro- 
duction of "Caliban" in New York City a girl 
who worked in a shop and who was in the 
Community Chorus, concealed above the stage 
out of sight of the audience, made bold to speak 
out of a full heart to the director. "Why has 
it got to end?" she said. "You have enjoyed 
seeing it then?" the director asked. "Oh, I 
didn't mean that," she returned, "I mean just 
being in it — singing with the others. I have 

241 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

never seen it. You see I sing alto, and there 
weren't enough altos to be spared to get off and 
look on. But I'll never get over the joy of 
being in it as long as I live. Somehow things 
seem different now. It was all so wonderful." 

Mr. Percy Mackaye, author of the Commu- 
nity Dramas *'The Evergreen Tree," "Cali- 
ban," ''The New Citizenship," "St. Louis," 
' ' Sanctuary, ' ' etc., made an address at a meet- 
ing of the American Civic Association, in 
Washington, December 13, 1916, in which he 
stated the whole purpose underlying the Com- 
munity Drama, delightfully and exquisitely. 
The substance of this address has since been 
published under the title "The Community 
Drama," which may be had through the Ameri- 
can Civic Association, Washington, D. C. 
Everyone interested in the subject should read 
this book. 

"My ideal of Community Drama is this," 
says Mr. Mackaye, "by means of large and 
nobly sensuous symbolism, to harmonize the 
complex art inheritances of drama with the 
simplicity of Christ's social message, for the 

242 



COMMUNITY DRAMA 

inspiration and expression of growing democ- 
racy. In brief, splendidly and efficiently to be 
neighbors.'* Mr. Mackaye says the name pag- 
eantry is misleading; ''for pageantry, in its 
right meaning, is but one phase, and not at all 
the most important phase, of the cooperative 
art of the theater; and that is why I greatly 
prefer the name Community Drama to desig- 
nate both the movement and the method which 
are involved in this new American relation of 
art to democracy. . . . NeigJihorliness: I want 
to come back to that word and thought, and re- 
peat it with the word drama. Neighborliness 
and Drama, the two are so seldom encountered 
in Forty-second Street!" 

Community Drama in America, however, is 
best known imder the term. Pageantry. Much 
has been written within the past few years con- 
cerning Pageantry, and the records of the great 
Community Dramas of Boston, St. Louis, New 
York, and many other cities, are easily avail- 
able. The village presents a strikingly beau- 
tiful and appropriate setting for the historical 
pageant, and the value to the young of a com- 

243 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

prehensive view of the history of their town 
cannot be overestimated. This is especially 
true if the section in which the town is located 
has been conspicuous in history. 

A Village Pageant. — Such a town is Thet- 
ford, Vermont. A sort of paralysis had fol- 
lowed the introduction of machinery and the 
inroads of modern methods of a reconstructed 
life had left the town lifeless and dull. Young 
men flocked to the cities, industry languished, 
agriculture was neglected. From such a de- 
pression Thetford was striving to rise and her 
spirit was expressed symbolically in a Com- 
munity Drama or historical pageant by the fig- 
ure of Pageantry, which, supported by strong, 
inspiring America, encourages the fainting 
spirit of Thetford, until she stoops and draws 
from the earth itself a conquering sword. This 
pageant did wonderful things for Thetford, and 
what Thetford did any small town can do. The 
process is simple, and the actual time taken in 
preparation and rehearsals is not long. 

Katherine Lord, herself a writer and director 
of pageants and Community Dramas, and au- 

244 



COMMUNITY DRAMA 

thor and director of the series of charming 
children's plays presented with signal success 
during successive seasons in New York City, 
gives the following practical suggestions for 
the benefit of those undertaking such work : 

''The organization, promotion and carrying 
through the pageant has a certain similarity 
whether the pageant be large or small, and the 
suggestions here given are based on the plans 
of organization actually used and thoroughly 
tested in pageants given by communities of 
every size, under various conditions, and in 
many parts of the country. 

"Arousing Interest. — Begin by calling a mass 
meeting in the town hall, church, school, or 
any convenient place to set forth the idea and 
purpose of the pageant. Have the mayor or 
other representative of the city government to 
preside and thus give to the plans the sanction 
of the municipality. Ask one or more of the 
local clergy, the high school principal, some of 
the leading business men and if possible an 
artist, a writer and a musician to assist in 
explaining the plan. You will be fortunate if 

245 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

you can get a man or woman to speak who 
comes from some town where a pageant has 
been given. Pictures of pageants given in oth- 
er places thrown on the screen will be found 
inspiring. Do not discourage your people by 
presenting pageant plans for cities larger than 
your own. The more informal the meeting can 
be made the better and everyone should be 
asked for suggestions and opinions. The more 
fully the pageant is the creation of the com- 
munity the more successful it will be. It is 
well however to have in advance a general out- 
line of the plan and the chairman should have 
a concise list of points upon which suggestions 
are needed. 

^^The Pageant of To-day. — The pageant as it 
is known today is only about a decade old. The 
pageant has been variously defined, but the 
definition given by a noted authority is *The 
pageant is a drama in which a community is 
the hero and groups, rather than individuals, 
are actors.' We in America have molded the 
pageant to our peculiar needs by adding two 
elements — symbolism and prophecy. We in- 

246 



COMMUNITY DRAMA 

vented the Pageant of the Idea, which has been 
largely used for propaganda, as the pageant 
of suffrage; we have often in our pageants 
gone forv\^ard quite definitely into the future 
as in Boston's pageant of the Perfect City. 
There is a strong feeling that the word pag- 
eant should only be used for Community Dram- 
as of great dignity and importance, and not for 
the less formal celebrations which are really 
festivals, nor for the more fantastic form prop- 
erly called The Masque. Yet in actual prac- 
tice it is often so used and for convenience wo 
will only use the word pageant, though much 
that follows is equally true of the festival and 
The Masque. 

*' Structure of the Pageant. — The pageant is 
divided into episodes, which are scenes having 
a relation to each other in being all on a cer- 
tain general subject, though they need not have 
the continuity or relation of cause and effect 
that must mark the acts of a play. Between 
the episodes may be put interludes which may 
be of an entirely different character. For in- 
stance the interludes may carry symbolical 

247 



THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

ideas or present fairy scenes, while the epi- 
sodes deal with facts in history. The interludes 
are often entirely in form of dance, or dance 
and pantomime, or they may be entirely musi- 
cal. Again the interludes may represent scenes 
illustrating present conditions, while the epi- 
sodes may depict the past. In the great Yale 
pageant two thousand school children dressed 
in blue and green and swaying in unison, typi- 
fied the great ocean across which voyaged Art, 
Literature, Science, etc., from the old world to 
the new. Often the pageant has a prologue 
and an epilogue, and these may be quite differ- 
ent in character from the main body of the 
pageant or from the interludes. 

"Choosing the Subject. — The subject of your 
pageant will almost choose itself. You may 
want to re-create the history of your town in 
which you will either construct the pageant 
yourself or employ an expert. Perhaps a com- 
bination of these two methods is the ideal. An ^ 
industry that is the life of the town, an art, 
the seasons, all have furnished subjects for 
pageants. 

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COMMUNITY DRAMA 

"Building the Pageant Book. — At first the 
idea of writing a pageant book may seem ap- 
palling. But no village is so small but wbat 
it has a few persons who possess the gift of 
literary construction. The minister, the high 
school principal, the editor — all have that fa- 
miliarity with the pen that will make it easy 
to set down the general outhne of your pageant 
in good form. The fewer spoken words the 
better. The bulk of the pageant should be 
presented by processional, pantomime, dance, 
the massing or movement of groups, and the 
small scenes in which spoken words become 
necessary should be concentrated as close to 
the audience as possible. 

'^ Finding Material. — There is probably no 
smallest village that has not several incidents 
connected with its founding or early history 
that make good pageant material, and in every 
community there are men and women who can 
recount the stories. Any town which has large 
numbers of foreigners among its population 
should not fail to have one scene depicting their 
life in the 'old country,' and if possible these 

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scenes should be enacted by the newly-made 
Americans. Thrilling incidents of the Revolu- 
tion and Civil War are numerous and interest 
is added by having such scenes enacted by the 
descendants of those who took the original 
parts. 

^^The Working Organisation. — Now that the 
subject is chosen and the pageant book or 
libretto is under way your attention must be 
turned to the organization of the pageant. Hav- 
ing had your mass meeting, interested the com- 
munity, and appointed an organization com- 
mittee of from twelve to twenty members you 
are ready to begin actual work. The following 
committees will be needed: finance, cast, cos- 
tume, site, music, ushering, attendance, allied 
entertainment, program and printing; and the 
chairmen of these committees form an Execu- 
tive Committee with a pageant master or di- 
rector at the head. The committees should be 
small, consisting of three or five members. The 
function of each should be distinct and each per- 
son should be directly responsible for some part 
of the work. 

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COMMUNITY DRAMA 

*' Expert Direction Necessary. — The casting 
of parts, rehearsals, and stage management of 
the pageant must be under the absolute control 
of a Pageant Master or Director, aided by a 
Music Director and a Dance Director, and by 
the various committees. The committee on cast 
will round up and present the participants to 
the supreme head; the costume committee will 
design and in some cases make costumes; the 
program committee will attend to the printing 
of the program and the securing of advertise- 
ments that should cover its cost ; the attendance 
committee will see to it that participants are 
notified of all rehearsals, pass upon excuses for 
non-attendance, and fill places when necessary ; 
the ushering committee will have charge of all 
seating arrangements and the entertainment 
committee will arrange all related festivities, 
such as receptions or social gatherings which 
often accompany a pageant. It cannot be too 
strongly emphasized that the Pageant Master 
must be the supreme head and last court of 
appeal. While he should make each one of his 
assistants responsible for certain work all mat- 

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THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

ters should be referred to Mm for final deci- 
sion. 

''Fmancing the Pagecmt. — The expenses of 
the pageant will vary according to its size and 
scope, but in any case they should be covered 
by receipts. If circumstances make it desirable 
to have no charge for admission expenses must 
be covered by subscription or specific gift but 
generally the pageant will be considered more 
worth while if a nominal admission fee is 
charged. Even though all the direction be vol- 
untary and the actors furnish their own cos- 
tumes there will be inevitable items of expense. 
An estimate of such expense should be made 
in the beginning and the project underwritten 
to provide for a deficit. 

^'Costuming the Pageant. — Decide whether 
the scale of costuming is to be simple or elabo- 
rate. All costumes must be designed or the de- 
signs passed upon by the Costumes Committee. 
When possible actors should make their own 
costumes as this adds to the community spirit. 
In many cases it has been found advantageous 
both in the interest of economy and harmony 

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COMMUNITY DRAMA 

of color for the committee to buy material in 
quantity. 

*'The Spirit of the Pageant. — Now your com- 
mittees are formed and at work; local papers 
will be glad to give assistance by a daily col- 
umn of pageant news; old men and maidens 
have each their task; young and old, rich and 
poor, are working together in an expression of 
Community life. Keep the purpose of your 
pageant clear; beware of self-seeking, vanity 
and jealousy ; make your pageant a real expres- 
sion of the people. Then it will be not only 
a popular success, but a real achievement that 
cannot fail to point the way to a continued 
cooperation in the larger life of the commu- 
nity." 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




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